The Analysis of Wonder

The Analysis of Wonder
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An Introduction to the Philosophy
of Nicolai Hartmann
Predrag Cicovacki
NEW YORK LONDON NEW DELHI SYDNEY
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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
Predrag Cicovacki, 2014
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ForHeidi:
KeepShining
Amandoesnotlearntounderstandanythingunlesshelovesit.
Goethe
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Contents
Chronological Table
ix
Introduction: Does Hartmann Matter?
Part I Being
I.1
I.2
I.3
I.4
I.5
I.6
I.7
I.8
Philosophical Method
9
Being as Being
17
Part II Values
Modifications of Being
23
Nature of Values
Strata of Real II.1
Being
29
II.2 Being
Moral Values in General 35
Categories of Real
II.3 and Categories of Cognition
Four Fundamental Moral Values
Categories of Being
41
II.4
Four Forms of Love
Ontology of Cognition
47
II.5
Aesthetic Object and Aesthetic
Critique of Intellectualism
53 Act
II.6
Aesthetic Values
II.7
Truth in Art
II.8
Sublime
II.9
Critique of Moralism
Part III
65
75
83
89
95
101
105
111
117
Personality
III.1 The Realm of Real Being and the Realm of Values

III.2 Personality as a Value
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125
131
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viii
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Contents
III.3 Pseudo, Spurious, and Genuine Personality

III.4 Fulfillment of Personality
137
Conclusion: Hartmanns New Ways of Philosophy
153
Bibliography of Hartmanns Works

Index
163
145
165
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Chronological Table1
1882
Nicolai Hartmann was born on February 20, in Riga, son of

Carl August Hartmann and his wife Helene, who were Baltic
Germans. Nicolai was one of their four children.
1897
Attends a German-speaking gymnasium in Saint Petersburg.
190203 Studies Medicine in Dorpat.

190305 Studies philosophy and classical languages in Saint Petersburg.
190507
Continuation of studies in Marburg.
1907
Defends PhD thesis: berdasSeinsprobleminder

griechischen PhilosophievorPlato [On the Problem of Being
in Greek
Philosophy before Plato].
190708
Returns to Saint Petersburg to teach Greek and Latin in a

gymnasium.
1909
Defends the Habilitation: DesProklusDiadochus

philosophischeAnfangsgrndederMathematik [The
Philosophical Foundations of Mathematics of Proclus
Diadochus].
Publication of PlatosLogikdesSeins[Platos Logic of Being].
1911
Marries Alice Stephanitz.
1912
Publication of DiephilosophischenGrundfragenderBiologie
[The Fundamental Philosophical Questions of Biology].
Birth of daughter Dagmar.
191418
Service in German Military in World War I.
191925
University Professor of Philosophy in Marburg.
The chronological table is mostly based on Martin Morgenstern, Nicolai Hartmann

zur Einfhrung (Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 1997), 1428 and 1912. Also used are
Robert Heiss, Nicolai Hartmann: A Personal Sketch, Personalist42:1961, 46986;
Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel, ed. Frida Hartmann and
Renate Heimsoeth (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1978); Hans-Georg
Gadamer, PhilosophicalApprenticeships, trans. R. R. Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1985); and Wolfgang Harich: NicolaiHartmannLeben, Werk, Wirkung, ed.
Martin Morgenstern (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2000).
x
1921
ChronologicalTable
Publication of GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis
[Basic Elements of a Metaphysics of Knowledge].
1923 Publication of Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, Bd. I:

Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik [The Philosophy of
German Idealism, Vol. 1: Fichte, Schelling and the
Romantics].
192530 Professor in Cologne.
1926
Presents ber die Stellung der sthetischen Werte im Reich

der Werte berhaupt [On the Place of Aesthetic Values in
the Realm of Values] at the Sixth International Congress of
Philosophy, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Publication of Ethik[Ethics].
Divorce from his first
wife. 1929 Marries Frida Rosenfeld.

Publication of DiePhilosophiederdeutschenIdealismus, Bd. II:
Hegel[The Philosophy of German Idealism, Vol. 2: Hegel].
1930
Presents Kategorien der Geschichte [Categories of History]

at the Seventh International Congress of Philosophy, in
Oxford.
Birth of son Olaf.
193145
Professor in Berlin.
1932
Birth of daughter Lise.
1933
Publication of DasProblemdesgeistigenSeins:
Untersuchungen zurGrundlegungderGeschichtsphilosophie
undder Geisteswissenschaften[The Problem of Spiritual
Being: Investigations on the Foundations of the Philosophy of
History
and the Human Sciences].
1935
Publication of ZurGrundlegungderOntologie[On
the Foundations of Ontology].
1938
Publication of MglichkeitundWircklichkeit[Possibility
and Actuality].
1940
Publication of DerAufbauderrealenWelt:Grundrissder
allgemeinenKategorienlehre[The Structure of the Real
World: Outline of a Theory of the General Categories].
1943
Publication of NeueWegederOntologie[New Ways

of Ontology].
194550
Professor in Gttingen.
ChronologicalTable
1950
xi
Publication of PhilosophiederNatur:Abrissderspeziellen
Kategorienlehre[Philosophy of Nature: Sketch of a Theory
of the Special Categories].
Dies on October 9.
1951
Posthumous publication of TeleologischesDenken

[Teleological Thinking].
1953
Posthumous publication of sthetik[Aesthetics].
195558 Posthumous publication of KleinereSchriften[Shorter Works],

Bd. I: AbhandlungenzurSystematischenPhilosophie(1955)
[Vol. I: Essays Concerning Systematic Philosophy]; Bd. II:
AbhandlungenzurPhilosophieGeschichte(1957) [Vol. II:
Essays on the History of Philosophy]; Bd. III: Vom
Neukantianismus zurOntologie(1958) [Vol. III: From NeoKantianism to Ontology].
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Introduction: Does Hartmann Matter?
A few years ago, a book was published with the title, Why Arendt
Matters.1 In the case of Hannah Arendt, such consideration is
hardly needed. Her analysis of the human condition, the origin of
totalitarianism, and the banality of evil belong to the highlights of
the twentieth-century philosophy, especially in its second half. While
she may not get all the recognition she deserves, especially among
philosophers, Arendts ideas are widely discussed and her books are
available even in small bookstores.
This is not the case with Nicolai Hartmann (18821950). In the
period between 1925 and 1950, he was considered one of the leading
German philosophers. His worksnumerous, systematic, displaying his
encyclopedic knowledge and covering a vast variety of subjects, from
ontology and epistemology to ethics and aesthetics quickly went into
second, third, and in some cases even fourth editions. His 800-pluspage Ethik was translated into English five years after its publication, but
that ended up being the only one of his major books rendered into this
language. In the second half of the twentieth- and at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, Hartmann has been a neglected philosopher. He has
been a forgotten giant.
I find this state of affairs puzzling. From the first years of my
philosophy studies on, Hartmann has been one of my inspirations, one of
my teachers. Every time I open his books, I learn something; his texts
compel me to think afresh about a variety of philosophical issues. For this
reason, with this introduction to his philosophy, I want to re-open the
case for Hartmann. This book will focus on the questions concerning the
nature and value of Hartmanns philosophy. More formally, the questions
are:
1. What is at the core of Hartmanns philosophy?

2. What relevance, if any, does Hartmanns philosophy have for us in the
twenty-first century?
There are two main obstacles for this project. The first is that philosophy
itself is in such a state of disarray that it is not easy to say anymore either
1
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters (New Haven, CN: Yale

University Press, 2006).
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what philosophy is, or what role it is supposed to play in our age. The
second obstacle is that Hartmann kept away from all the main currents of
philosophy of his time; this makes it difficult to engage him in a dialogue
that could help estimate the nature and value of his philosophy. I will
briefly clarify both issues.
In a recent book, Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that
Shape the 21st Century, A. C. Grayling, a well-respected Oxford
philosopher, introduces our discipline in the following way: Philosophy
is derived from a Greek word literally meaning love of wisdom, but it is
better and more accurately defined as enquiry or enquiry and
reflection, giving expressions to their widest scope to denote efforts to
understand the world and human experience in it.2 This introduction is
so vague, so open-ended, so uninspiring, that, despite Graylings effort to
make philosophy seem relevant, it only makes the reader wonder whether
philosophy has any role to play in our lives: Can its concepts shape the
twenty-first century? Do its ideas matter at all?
When insiders are so confused, we sometimes find deeper
understanding of a certain discipline among its amateurish admirers.
A famous historian, Will Durant, describes philosophy as an attempt to
coordinate the real in the light of the ideal. He adds that metaphysics
is the study of the ultimate reality of all things: of the real and final
nature of matter (ontology), of mind (philosophical psychology), and of
the interrelation of mind and matter in the process of perception and
knowledge (epistemology).3
The second part of Durants clarification is fairly standard. The first
part, however, is interesting, even for Hartmanns point of view:
philosophy is an attempt to coordinate the real in the light of the ideal.
This is of interest for several reasons. First, it puts no direct emphasis
either on knowledge or on morals, as is customary nowadays. Durants
characterization is also intriguing because it does not preclude an
understanding of philosophy as love of wisdom: the wisdom of how to
govern our lives in this troubled, disorienting age. Hartmann is always
engaged in dialectical wrestling with philosophical tradition, and this
original meaning of philosophy may be more important to him than it
is for the vast majority of contemporary philosophers. Finally, Durants
relating of the ideal and the real is significant for Hartmann because being
and values are two major themes of his entire philosophical opus. Values
are not derived from real being, but belong to
2
A. C. Grayling, Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century
(New York: Perseus Books, 2009), 263.
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of Great Philosophers
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 3.
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Does Hartmann Matter?
an independent realm that he calls ideal being. For Hartmann, as for

Durant, the realespecially our livesneeds to be coordinated in the light
of the ideal.
The problems of fitting Hartmann into adialogue with other
philosophers of his age begin with his insistence on the central and
indispensible role of ontology for the overall philosophical project.
Even a cursory list of his main publications shows us that he dedicated
most of his career to developing a systematic ontology and articulating
its relevance for other disciplines: Grundzge einer Metaphysik
der Erkenntnis (Basic Elements of a Metaphysics of Knowledge,
1921; forth ed., 1949), Die Philosophie des deutschen
Idealismus (The Philosophy of German Idealism, Vol. I: 1923; Vol.
II: 1929), Ethik (Ethics, 1925; 3rd edn, 1949), Das Problem des
geistigen Seins (The Problem of Spiritual Being, 1933; 2nd edn,
1949), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (On the Foundations of
Ontology, 1935; 3rd edn, 1948), Mglichkeit und Wirklichkeit
(Possibility and Actuality, 1938; 2nd edn, 1948), Der Aufbau der
realen Welt (The Structure of the Real World, 1940; 2nd edn, 1949),
Die Philosophie der Natur (Philosophy of Nature, 1950),
Teleologisches Denken (Teleological Thinking, 1951), and
sthetik (Aesthetics, 1953).
Since ontology has been virtually nonexistent from the publication of
Kants Critique (1781), why does Hartmann go back to ontology? Do
we really need ontology to examine how the ideal can and should help
us coordinate our lives? Why not approach the eternal and the everrelevant question of how to live in the best possible way without
considering the ontological question of being as being?
We can do it, as Arendt did, through political philosophy; after all, a
human being is a political animal who cannot establish his/her humanity
without social encounters with other human beings. Or we can attempt
to understand our nature through the structure of the language we use,
as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernst Cassirer, and Hans-Georg Gadamer (once
Hartmanns student) did. Or we can approach the question of humanity
through religion, as for instance Hartmanns contemporary Martin Buber
did, because it is always tempting to determine our existence in
comparison to what we are not and what we cannot become, that is, the
divine being. Or we could attempt to reveal our role and place in reality by
directly focusing on the human existence (Dasein) and its challenges,
particularly anxiety with regard to death, as Martin Heidegger (once
Hartmanns colleague in Marburg) did.4
4
Arendt was a student in Marburg just when Hartmann was finishing his career there,
but she was never Hartmanns student. Gadamer was, but he quickly switched to
Heidegger. After the initial mutual sympathy between Hartmann and Heidegger, the
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Hartmann would have none of it. He approaches philosophy in the

spirit of philosophia perennis, and shows hardly any interest in
historicism, existentialism, hermeneutics, positivism, and pragmatism.
This peculiar approach opened a chasm between Hartmann and his
contemporaries and turned him away from the prevailing debates of his
time. According to his student and friend, Robert Heiss,
Hartmann knewwellthere isa philosophy too which isthe mere
temporal phenomenon of an era and bound to its age. But to him
such a temporal dowry was philosophys perishable wrapping only.
Its philosopher could only be an announcer for his time and
through everything he says and formulates as truth appears a single
and transitory experience only, which Hartmann considered not as
immutable truth. Hartmann lived in the face of centuries. He was the
contemplative who remains distant and remote from the incidents of
a century, because he actually lives in the presence of centuries.5
Despite Heisss enthusiastic proclamations, every philosophy emerges at

a certain age. And although it must be partially affected by the spirit of
time, philosophy does not have to be blinded by it. On the Russian front
during World War I, Hartmann conceived of a complex system of ontology,
focusing on the problem of being as being. Toward the end of the war, he
began writing his Ethics, searching for the immutable essences of
moral values. In the besieged and virtually destroyed Berlin of 1945, he
wrote his monumental Aesthetics in which he pondered the true
nature of the beautiful and the sublime.
Hartmann was indeed focused on eternal aspects of philosophical
problems. Yet he did not and could not ignore the differences in the
interpretations of these problems, as they were affected by historical events
and the epochs in which they emerged. Nor was he like Rodens Thinker,
absorbed in his own thoughts and oblivious to the historical tides of his
own times. Hartmann did live in his own age and his philosophical
thinking was acutely aware of the different temporally conditioned
approaches to
personal relation cooled off and their professional opposition intensified as well. For
more details, see Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, trans. R. R.
Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 1215 and passim. See also
Wolfgang Harich: Nicolai HartmannLeben, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Martin
Morgenstern (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2000).
5
Robert Heiss, Nicolai Hartmann: A Personal Sketch, Personalist, 42:1961, 4823.
Following Heiss and Hartmann, throughout the manuscript, I use he and man
generically, that is, to refer to a human being and not to one gender only. The choice is
based purely on the simplicity of this language, as opposed to the cumbersome he or
she and his/her expressions.
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Does Hartmann Matter?
philosophy and its central problems.6 Arendt famously claimed that it is

not ideas but events [that] change the world.7 Hartmann did not think
that we can understand the events we experience without previously held
ideas, or that ideas are endorsed in order to change the world.
In light of such obstacles and complexities, how can we discern the true
nature and relevance of Hartmanns philosophy?
In this book, I will use three measuring sticks, moving from the
most general toward the most specific. First, I will use some help from
Karl Jaspers. In the Introduction to his monumental book, The
Great Philosophers, he divides all majors philosophers into three
main groups:
(1) the pragmatic individuals (such as Buddha, Confucius, Socrates and
Jesus); (2) the great thinkers at the borders of philosophy and other realms
of human experience (e.g., Goethe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy); and (3) the great
philosophical thinkers. Jaspers then divides this third group into several
subcategories: (3.1) the seminal thinkers, whose ideas have continued
to bear fruit (Plato, St Augustine, Kant); (3.2) the intellectual visionaries
and original metaphysicians (Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plotinus, Spinoza);
(3.3) the great disturbers, regardless of whether they were primarily the
probing negators (Abelard, Descartes, Hume), or the radical awakeners
(Pascal, Lessing, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche); and (3.4) the creative orderers,
whose great systems are the culmination of long developments (Aristotle,
Aquinas, Hegel).8
If Hartmann belongs to the Pantheon of great philosophical thinkers, at
the end of this treatise we would be able to determine into which group he
should be classified.
Second, the evaluation of Hartmanns philosophy can also be
approached in a more thematic way. He clearly stands within the Western
philosophical tradition and inherits some of its main concerns, problems
and assumptions. This tradition, though it has been long and complex, can
perhaps be summed up by its four central pillars:
1. The
principle of order, which holds that everything that exists is

ordered and structured.
2. The principle of knowability, which asserts that everything

that has structure and order is knowable.
See, for instance, Hartmanns article, German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years,
which he wrote as President of the German Philosophical Association; MIND
58:1949, 41333.
7
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998), 273.
8
Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers: The Foundations, ed. Hannah Arendt,
trans. Ralph Mannheim (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), 7.
6
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3. The principle of self-mastery, which affirms that ethical

4.
development and virtuous behavior require self-discipline and selfrestraint.

The principle of reciprocity between virtuous behavior and
happiness, which postulates that those who master their own passions
and behave virtuously will be rewarded, while those who do not will
be punished.9
These principles can be rephrased in terms of the idea of harmony,

with which they are intimately associated. We could then express their
meanings as follows. The first principle asserts harmony within
being itself. The second postulates harmony between being and the
mind. The third talks about establishing harmony within human
beings. The fourth expresses a conviction that human behavior
and events in the world are harmoniously arranged (roughly on the
model of action and to it proportionate reaction).
How does Hartmann respond to these four fundamental principles?
Would he accept them? Modify them? Reject them?
Thirdly, Hartmanns philosophy can be approached in an even more
focused way. For example, we can take seriously an ancient belief that
every philosopher truly develops only one idea. This deeply rooted belief
implies that a philosopher is born of a single question, the question that
he must find a way to answer. If this is so, the ultimate concern of our
inquiry into the nature and value of Hartmanns philosophical legacy
becomes much clearer: What is this one question in Hartmanns case?
What is his single central philosophical idea?
My reconstruction of these assumptions is based on Richard Tarnass book, The

Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have
Shaped Our World View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993).
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Part I
Being
Beingitselfisdisharmonious,andconflictistheformofitsbeing.
Hartmann
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I .1
Philosophical Method
For Plato and Aristotle, philosophy begins with wonder (). Arendt
understands in terms of a shocked wonder at the miracle of
being, which could leave us speechless because the actual content of what
is observed is untranslatable into words. It is precisely this shocked
wonder that eventually leads Plato toward the beholding of Ideas. While
Aristotle speaks about the beginning of philosophy in virtually the same
terms as Plato, his emphasis is different than that of his teacher. For
Aristotle, the actual impulse to philosophize lies in the desire to escape
ignorance.1
The modern spirit of doubt stands in striking contrast to the ancient
spirit of wonder. All modern philosophy, maintains Arendt, consists in the
ramifications of Descartes radical doubt. Dudley Young points out
another important difference between the ancient and modern attitudes,
the one dealing with the will-to-power. To wonder at the world involves
not only attentiveness and awe, but also the intention to keep what is
wonder-ful safe from the forces of ignorance that would soil and obscure
it. According to Young, Philosophy originates not in the will-to-power
but in wonder, which is to say that the world we wish to understand calls
us in the first instance to arrest our movements, put down our tools, and be
properly astonished by its that-ness . . . before we set to work analyzing
its what-ness.2
Hartmann would approve of the remarks by both Arendt and Young.
He also subscribes to the ancient view that philosophy begins with wonder
and argues that there is no other natural entrance path to philosophy. The
ancient philosophers wondered at the beauty and complexity of the
, of the universe which they experienced as a living being.
Philosophy begins with wonder, and it consists in the thoughtful
exploration of the beauty and the complexity of the universe. For
Hartmann, philosophy is the analysis
ofwonder.
1
Hannah Arendt, TheHumanCondition, 302, note 67. See also Arendt, TheLifeofthe
Mind(San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1978), 14151.
Dudley Young, OriginsoftheSacred(New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 270.
9/26/2013 4:04:35 PM
TheAnalysisofWonder
10
Hartmann accounts for different stages of philosophical thinking by

combining phenomenology and aporetics. Philosophy is a conceptual
analysis of not of words, not of concepts, not of ideas,
but of what appears to us, of what is given to us. While we have to start
with phenomena, we must reach toward that which appears in and
through phenomena. Knowledge is not of phenomena, not of things as they
appear. Knowledge is of things as they are.
This is why Husserl uses the term phenomenology to issue a call:
ZurckzudenSachen return to the things themselves. The motive
for this call is a preoccupation of modern philosophers not so much with
the wonders of the universe, but with the wonders of the mind cognizing
this universe. Instead of focusing on things we observe, we concentrate on
mental processes by means of which we observe and analyze those
things. What does not even penetrate the consciousness of a normal
observerto observe how he observes, to be conscious of his own
consciousnessbecomes a chief concern of modern philosophy. This
explains the shift in philosophy not only from ontology to epistemology,
but also toward the philosophy of mind, psychology, and logic. It is also
the motivation behind works such as Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit
the study of forms of consciousness.
Hartmann is sometimes considered a phenomenologist and his work is
even called the culminating point of the phenomenological movement.3 But
he is a phenomenologist only in so far as he supported Husserls respect for
a careful intuitive observation of reality and his enthusiasm to return to
things themselves. For Hartmann, this is more than a mere methodological
point:
A narrowing of the field of vision is the inveterate vice of philosophy.
The defect in all isms whether rationalism, empiricism, sensualism,
materialism, psychologism or logicismis narrowness in the mapping
out of the problem. Everywhere the manifoldness of the phenomena is
misjudged and varieties are erroneously treated as all alike.4
Philosophy begins with wonder and leads to problems and aporias

(). Even careful and open-minded observations of
phenomena
See Michael Landmann, Nicolai Hartmann and Phenomenology, Philosophy and
PhenomenologicalResearch, 3:1942/3, 393423, especially 396 and 422.
4
Nicolai Hartmann, Ethik, trans. Stanton Coit (New York: Macmillan, 1932) in three
volumes. Coits translations was recently modified by A. M. Kinneging and
republished by Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ: Vol. I: Moral
Phenomena, 2002; Vol. II: Moral Values, 2003; Vol. III. Moral Freedom, 2004). I
will give references to the chapter and section of the German edition, and then in the
brackets to the volume and page number of the English translation; in this particular
case, ch. 7a [I, 106].
3
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PhilosophicalMethod
11
lead to aporias, which are like knots in wood. They are not made by us,
nor do they emerge because of our ignorance, lack of depth, or because
we approach problems from the wrong angle. The knots are in the wood
itself, in the grains of the world that we encounter. They emerge as the
tree of being grows. We encounter them regardless of our philosophical or
historical perspectiveregardless of whether we look at the tree of being
from the top or bottom, from the left or right.
These knots, those problems and aporias, create a philosophical
challenge. They present a challenge because it is difficult to cut a knot
through the middle, no matter how hard we try or how skillful we are.
Often we must acknowledge these knots and leave them as they are. Only
in that sense does philosophy become theoretical () not as a
definitive or comprehensive solution of certain problems, and even less as
a complete theoretical system. Philosophy is (only) a wayof looking and
considering, of grasping and contemplating the complexities of the world
as much and as carefully as that is possible.5
Although practiced by Socrates and Plato, Hartmann credits Aristotle
for developing aporetics. The virtue of Aristotles forgotten procedure
consists in approaching philosophical problems by analyzing the given
facts and trying to uncover the inner structure of the problems in question.
Grasping the inner structure of philosophical problems allows us to
ignore their accidental features and historical residues. It also enables us
to understand what is ceaselessly puzzling in these problems.
Metaphysical problems are nothing but eternal puzzles that the world
poses to us.
Aristotle relates aporias to , the explorations of various
routes or ways. This is why Hartmann translates the Greek word aporia
as Weglsigkeit: encountering obstacles on our way and getting lost en
route. These obstacles may result from our ignorance and confusion.
They also, and no less importantly, emerge from the path, from reality
itself: being itself is disharmonious, and conflict is the form of being.6
Taken in this sense, in GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, forth ed. (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1949), ch. 11, 125, Hartmann seems to suggest the following threestage approach: phenomena, problems (aporias), and theory. Roberto Poli maintains
that this is Hartmanns methodological approach; see his article on Hartmann in
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.standford.edu/entires/nicolaihartmann).
6
Nicolai Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie berhaupt mglich?, in Festschrift
frPaulNatorp(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1924), ed. E. Cassirer, 12477; reprinted
in Nicloai Hartmann, KleinereSchriften, Vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958), 268313,
quoted from page 311. Translated by Keith Peterson as How is Critical Ontology
Possible? Axiomates22: 2012, 31554. See also Nicolai Hartmann, NeueWegeder
Ontologie, trans. Reinhard C. Kuhn as NewWaysofOntologyand first published in
English by Henry Regenery Company (Chicago, in 1953), and recently reissued by
Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ, 2012). I will give references by first
citing
5
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TheAnalysisofWonder
The aporia of cognition is one eternally puzzling philosophical problem.

An analysis of basic phenomena leads to this aporia. Phenomena reveal
that a subject and an object of cognition transcend each other, yet the act
of cognition consists in overcoming their gap. The subject and the object
stand against each other, separated from one another, and their ontological
status is by no means determined by their cognitive relation. This object is
indifferent toward any subject, that is, toward being known by any subject.
And even the subject is not limited to this relation, for cognition is only
one of the possible ways in which any subject relates to the world.
Nevertheless, as subjects and objects of cognition, there is an important
relation between them. The aporia of cognition reveals the paradoxical
nature of this relation: Is the cognitive relation of the subject and the
object something accidental and inessential to their separate existences,
or does it abdicate their transcendence? Hartmann devotes his first major
philosophical work, BasicElementsofaMetaphysicsofKnowledge, to this
aporia.
Hartmann perceives the most distinctive virtue of Aristotles aporetics as
discussing problems without trying to solve them at any cost.7 This is not
an innocent remark, for Hartmann believes that the strictly metaphysical
aspects of philosophical problems are beyond the limits of the rationally
resolvable. They are insolvable not because of a lack of the right method,
or our ignorance, or, more generally, some deficiency of the cognitive
subject. Rather, they are unsolvable because there is something conflicting
and irreconcilable in the very nature of being. This metaphysical aspect of
philosophical problems is unavoidable, and thus the goal of philosophy
cannot be to solve its problems no matter what. The aporetic method
does not look longingly for results.8 Its goal must instead be to establish
the minimum of metaphysics necessary for the proper consideration of
philosophical problems.9
the chapter from which the quote is taken (which is the same for the original German
and the English translation), and then by giving a page number of the Transaction
edition; in this particular case, ch. VI, 6773.
7
Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Introduction, 8.
In Ethik, ch. 75a [III, 138], Hartmann claims: No philosophy solves metaphysical
problems, it can only deal with them; and how far it can succeed in so doing must
always remain doubtful. As an illustration of this approach, see ch. 84 [III, 2515] of
Ethik.
8
Nicolai Hartmann, Diesseits von Idealismus and Realismus, KantStudien29:1924,
161.
9
Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysik der Erkenntnis, Introduction, 8. For further
discussion, see Anton Schlittmaier, Nicolai Hartmanns Aporetics and Its Place in
the History of Philosophy, in The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, ed. R. Poli, C.
Scognamiglio, and F. Tremblay (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 3352.
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13
Aristotle distances himself from Socrates, who claims that the only
knowledge that he has is that of his ignorance. Yet even Aristotle admits
that the resolutions of the aporias we face may take a variety of forms: not
only the positing of the most likely hypothesis, which he considers to be
the distinguishing feature of the method of analysis, but also of allowing
the existence of a reasonable contradiction, which is the subject matter of
dialectic.
To emphasize the same point, in his writings after BasicElementsofa
MetaphysicsofKnowledge, Hartmann speaks more often about antinomies
than about aporias. In this sense, he follows Kant, who argues that
speculative metaphysics leads to the contrasting, equally supportable
claims that cannot be resolved by rational means (alone). Kant initially
accepts the existence of four antinomies of pure reason, but in the
subsequent Critiques (Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of
Judgment), he discovers new
antinomies in other realms of philosophical thinking as well. According to
Hartmann, there are metaphysical aporias and antinomies in every aspect
of being, in every facet of human experience.
Can these aporias and antinomies ever be resolved? Is the task of
philosophy to lead us to the definitive solutions to such metaphysical
problems?
Hartmann does not think so. In this context, it may be important to
introduce a few of his thoughts on dialectic. Like a Socratic dialogue,
dialectic deals with differing, frequently opposing views. Socrates has
no problem with his dialogues ending in aporias, as long as they lead his
interlocutors to realize the unsoundness of their own previously held views
and their ignorance with regard to some important ethical issues. Plato and
Aristotle turn dialectic into a positive method, a method by means of
which we come to the most general ideas from most specific cases. Like
Socrates, Kant retorts to the negative aspect of dialectic, the dialectic as
the logic of illusion, a way of curbing the unfounded pretentions of
speculative reason. For Hegel, dialectic once again becomes a positive
method by which a thesis and its antithesis are resolved into a higher
synthesis.
Hartmann resists this textbook interpretation of Hegels dialectical
method. He does not hide his high, almost reverential opinion about this
method:
Under all circumstances one will not be able to conceal that there
is something opaque, unclarified and enigmatic in dialectic. There
were in all ages only very few who mastered it, isolated ones indeed.
In antiquity there were about three or four speculative thinkers; in
the modern period definitely not moreat least of those who have
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TheAnalysisofWonder
14
created with it something definite. Obviously there is a characteristic

dialectical giftedness which permits development, but does not result
from training. It is then a special, original, independent gift of inner
vision and indeed of a synoptic grasping, which, advancing along
the coherent data, sees them at once from various aspects again and
again and notices them iridescent in their contradictions but at the
same time grasps the subjection of the contrasts to the thing itself. It
is remarkable that those with dialectic talent do not reveal the
mystery of dialectics; they have the method and apply it well, but
they cannot describe how they do it. Evidently they themselves do
not know it. It is comparable to the creation of the artist. The artist
does not know the law he follows when he creates. But he creates in
conformity to it. Genius and the congenial both follow the law
blindly, unfailingly, as in somnambulism.10
Hartmann frequently claims that philosophy is one of the sciences. He uses

the word analysis in a related way, suggesting that our exploration of a
certain subject has to be as systematic and rigorous as possible. Such an
approach does not tell the whole story of his understanding of philosophy
and its method. Philosophical analysis is initiated by the careful grasping
of the phenomena and stands opposed to all aprioristic deductivism, which
burdened even Hegels dialectic. Such careful grasping, followed by a
step- by-step analysis, with the subtle, almost infinite shading of the
details, as we know especially from Hartmanns ethical and aesthetic
writings, is neither widely nor sufficiently developed among philosophers.
Althoughsuchastep-by-stepanalysisisbothdifficultandrare, Hartmann
is aware that dialectic poses even greater challenges.11 Analysis can take us
far in our efforts to understand the problems as much as possible, yet every
analysis has its limitations, and they are most clearly revealed when we
come to the ultimate questions, or the questions of principles. Despite all
the artificial constructions in his Logic, it is to Hegels great merit that he
recognizes that, when we deal with fundamental questions of principle, our
analysis comes to an end and becomes impotent. Every time we deal with
these fundamental questions, we encounter an antinomy. And antinomies
10
11
Nicolai Hartmann, Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus (Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter, 1974), Vol. 2, Part III, ch. 2, 378. See Nicolai Hartmann, sthetik (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1966), ch. 41d, 466, for the connection between dialectic and
aesthetic experience.
See Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie berhaupt mglich? especially 30231;
and Nicolai Hartmann, Der Aufbau der realen Welt, 3rd edn (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1964), ch. 17, 14956.
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15
can be dealt with only through dialectical thinking. In Hartmanns view,

it is precisely the task of dialectic to track down concealed antinomical
elements wherever they exist.
The fact that there were only a few masters of dialectic in the entire
history of Western philosophy suggests to Hartmann that dialectic is more
like a gift than a method that can be trained. Philosophical thinking relies
on analysis, on a rational exploration of all data and knowledge available
to us, from common sense to scientific knowledge. Yet philosophy ends in
dialectical thinking, which does not shun oppositions, contradictions, or
even insoluble problems. On the contrary, it thrives in them, which is why
sometimes dialectical thinking is called the logic of paradoxes.
If dialectic, as the crown of philosophical thinking, cannot be fully
articulated and trained, if it makes a philosopher more like an artist and
a somnambulist than like a scientist, then it will certainly have an impact
on how philosophy is understood and practiced. Philosophy is not a quest
for certainty. It is not a product but a project. Despite its systematic and
rigorous approach, philosophy does not prove anything. It probes.
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I.2
Being as Being
Aristotles most famous book, Metaphysics, was not named that way
by him. He left no title at all, and its editors placed it behind his works
on Physics. Thus the name Metaphysics: behind (or above, or beyond)
physics. It is generally accepted that this title, accidental as it is, is
accurate. Hartmann disagrees. He believes that the book should be named
Ontology since it deals with ontological problems. One exception is
book XII, which focuses on metaphysical issues in the narrow sense.
Hartmann holds that ontological problems are a subset of metaphysical
problems concerning the ultimate nature and structure of being (
, Sein). Unlike the majority of our metaphysical problems, he argues
that ontological problems are most solvable. Yet, we cannot solve them
if we follow the ways of traditional ontology:
The old theory of being is based upon the thesis that the universal,
crystallized in the essentia as substantial form and comprehensible
as concept, is the determining and formative core of things. . . . The
extreme representatives of this doctrine even assigned true reality to
the universal essences alone, thereby disparaging the world of time
and [individual] things.1
The essence of things can be captured by concepts and definitionsor at

least that was the expectation of the old ontology. Existence itself,
however, is far more slippery. Among other things, it requires contact
with and careful observation of the concrete being under consideration.
This is where phenomenology replaces the old deductive ontology.
Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, ch. I, 2930. Etienne Gilson expresses it in a way

closer to our common sense understanding: Human reason feels at home in a world
of things whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but
shy and ill at ease in a world of existences, because to exist is an act, not a thing;
Godand Philosophy, 2nd edn (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2002), 67.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
Hartmann argues that this type of deductive ontology is impossible for

us. The time of ontological systemsindeed, of all grandiose
philosophical constructionsis over. After Christian Wolffs monumental
effort to build the ultimate ontological system, ontology has been
neglected; it has fallen into centuries-long sleep. Yet ontological problems
are not fabricated problems that can simply be dismissed. Hartmanns task
is to revitalize the sleeping beauty, to open new ways of ontology.
Ontology itself, with its sets of traditional problems, is as indispensible as
ever.2
Why, exactly, do we need ontology? Whyshould not ontological
problems, understood as the perennial problems that deal with the
structure of being as being, be dismissed?
Hartmann counters that all fundamental metaphysical questions are
ontological in nature. Ontological views are present in the background of
most other questions, including scientific ones; science cannot determine
what is matter, force, energy, space, time, et cetera. Science must accept
certain ontological interpretation of these categories. This is one important
way ontology is essential for our overall understanding of reality and our
place and role within it. In the second and the third parts of this book we
will consider the significance of ontology for ethics, aesthetics, and our
understanding of personality.
I am emphasizing this point because Hartmanns entire philosophical
opus depends on his view that ontology is an endeavor that has a grounding
function for other intellectual disciplines. If he is right, the ontological
views have a domino effect on the rest of our beliefs. To make this clearer,
Hartmann reminds us that it makes a difference whether, for instance,
we agree with Plato that the particular is less real and derivative of the
universal, or, like Aristotle, turn it upside down. It makes an even greater
difference whether we concur with ancient and scholastic philosophers that
being and good are intimately connected, or assert, together with modern
philosophers, that this is not so, and that cosmology and ethics have
nothing in common. This kind of denial is decisive for our understanding
of ethics in terms of autonomy, rather than as moral norms revealed to us
by some transcendent deity.
We will decide later whether ontology has indeed such a grounding role
in our thinking. Hartmann opens his FoundationsofOntologyin a more
Nicolai Hartmann, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, forth ed. (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1965), xi. For Hartmanns masterful summary review of the history of
ontological thought, see Chapters 510 of this work. His review also includes a harsh
criticism of Heidegger.
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BeingasBeing
19
restricted manner, focusing on the simplest and most direct ontological

problem of being as being:
Ontology begins with a decisive statement of openness regarding the
fundamental metaphysical questions, with an attitude that stands
in opposition to philosophical perspectives and systems. From the
point of view of ontology, it is not at all important, in terms of posing
the question, whether or not there is such a thing as a ground of the
world, whether or not this ground has an intelligible form, or even
whether or not the construction of the world has some meaningful
end toward which its whole process is oriented. The character of
being as such is not significantly altered by the answers to such
questions. These distinctions only come into play when considering
broader aspects of differentiation. Clearly, decisive consequences for
metaphysics arise from the initial handling of the question of being.
But this understanding cannot be taken the other way around. We
cannot know anything about the world or its ground before we get
into the question of being. Neither can theories regarding the objects of
being be verified. For, by its very essence, the problem of being would
appear to be rooted in such questions. It inheres in phenomena, not in
hypotheses.3
Philosophers (and scientists) have always searched for the ultimate

elements of reality. They have searched for them in the sense in which
the roots of the tree of knowledge represent the ultimate issues in
Descartes, or in the way God, immortality, and freedom signify the
ultimate concerns in Kants metaphysics. The beginning and the end of
the paragraph quoted above warn not to approach the question of being
as being in terms of hypothesis and pre-formed theories. Also, it means
not to expect that there must be some ultimate or unconditioned element
or substance holding together the entire edifice of being. This expectation
has an unfortunate ripple effect in all directions and impacts how we treat
many other issues. We must approach the central ontological question
with an open mind, by paying close attention to phenomena. According to
cognitive phenomena, being is a neutral category. As Hartmann
repeatedly insists, such an approach will allow us a point of departure
from this side of idealism and realism, from a natural standpoint, not
yet infected by philosophical theories and their prejudices.
3
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 1a, 36.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
Hartmanns open-minded approach to given phenomena leads him to

hold on to natural realism. Taken as such, this is a pre-philosophical and
pre-theoretical view that being is what it is. Being has the structure that it
does, regardless of what anyone may think or know about it, of whether the
world as a whole is rational or not, purposive or not, cognizable or not.
This natural realism, which postulates the independence and
indifference of being toward any subject, its interests, expectations, or
cognitive standpoint, is common ground between nave and scientific
cognition. In Hartmanns words, as a matter of principle, ontology
tracks only the problem and considers only that which is demanded by
the problem. It moves away from the natural standpoint as little as
possible, and it preserves its point of view as far as it is valid.4
Ontological analysis of being treats Aristotles question of being as
being as the initial question of ontology and this is important for several
reasons. One of the most important messages of Hartmanns entire opus
deals with the fullness and richness of being. He intends to revive
philosophy, so that it can adapt to the reality of the world in its richness.
Hartmanns intention need not be immediately obvious, for the question of
being as being amounts to approaching being in its bareness. We have to
ponder what it means to be, simply to exist: not as this or that kind of
thing, not necessarily as a thing, but simply to be. Think about it: in order
to come to the richness and fullness of being, we need to start from its
sheer existence.
Although this question of being as being may appear simple, it is
actually extremely difficult to think through. The history of philosophy is
testimony to the fact that we often rush to classify being in terms of some
of its characteristics, determinations or predicates, rather than keeping
it open, preserving it in its bareness, and focusing on it in its generality
and indeterminacy. A cardinal sin of traditional ontology is its perpetual
attempts to define being through its various contents and manifestations.
Regardless of whether this is done in terms of substance, essence,
causality, matter, form, immovable, unchangeable, indivisible, individual,
whole, or any other way, Hartmann finds this project irreparably flawed,
and for the same reason. All these concepts limit themselves to individual
categories of being. They get only one side of being and miss being as
being. They forget that the problem of being as being deals not only with
the inorganic world, but with a living organism, as well as with the
psychic and spiritual forms of life.
Naivety and common sense limit being to things. But being belongs
equally to processes, relations, and properties of things. Being belongs
4
Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, ch. 23, 185.
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BeingasBeing
21
to what is changing and becoming, as well as to that which is enduring

or permanent. It does not distinguish between what appears and what is
hidden, or what can be cognized and what will never be so. Being belongs
to what is one, as much as it belongs to what is many, to parts or to totality;
to what is individual as to what is universal. What is evil is no less real
than what is good; what is ugly has its being no less than what is
beautiful or sublime. As Hartmann sums it up: The most insignificant
grain of dust in the universe is no less being than the universe itself.5
Hartmann is firmly convinced that beingsimply being as being
cannot be defined. Being is the most general category we can think and ask
about. There is nothing else behind it to which it can be further reduced,
or in terms of which it can be defined. In this regard, there is no difference
between being (as the most general ontological category), the good (as
the most general ethical category), and the beautiful (as the most general
aesthetic category). The most general categories are always indefinable and
thus partially irrational.
Although being as being has a grounding function, although it serves
as the root for all specific manifestations of being, Hartmann rejects linear
hierarchies of being. We can attempt to grasp some aspects of the relations
of being as being toward the individual beings. Perhaps we even have an
intellectual obligation to clarify them as much as possible. Much about
them will, however, remain unknown forever. With the rest of our
scientific and philosophical efforts, ontology will never become a closed
system, a complete body of knowledge. What little can be known about
being will, nevertheless, turn out to be of enormous significance.
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 7e, 66.
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I.3
Modifications of Being
Although being is not definable, this does not imply that it is

indeterminable. Being can be determined indirectly, through its various
manifestations. Hartmann bases his new ontology on three kinds of
ontological manifestations: (i) modes(or modalities) of being, which refer
to various kinds of modalities; (ii) momentsof being, which deal with the
relationship of Dasein(that something is existent and present) and Sosein
(how it is; its being in a certain way); (iii) waysof being, which concern
the relationship between the real and the ideal.
The structure of being can be conceived of in terms of the relation
of modes that govern it, that is, in terms of inter-modal relations. The
modalities do not pertain to what being is, its content, but the mode in
which it exists. These possible modes divide into absolute modalities
(reality and unreality) and relative modalities (possibility, impossibility,
necessity). We can further distinguish each of these relative modes by
their sub-modes. For example, there is not only logical necessity, but
also epistemological and real necessity. There is also a counter-modality
to necessity, namely contingency.
In order to understand being as being, ontology must begin with an
examination of possibility and actuality. For centuries this was considered
the fundamental problem of ontology. New ontology must readdress this
issue, because old ontology confuses actuality (Wirklichkeit, as opposed
to possibility) and reality (Realitt, as opposed to ideality [Idealitt])a
mode of being versus a way of being. Old ontology also does not carefully
distinguish between a moment of being and a mode of being: what exists
and what is real. Hartmann points out that something can exist but not
necessarily as a real being; it can also exist as an ideal being.
Old ontology postulates, regarding the relationship of potentiality and
actuality, that everything real is a realization of a pre-existing potentiality
(or disposition). In its most teleological turn, old ontology also assumes
that all being is destined to become what it is by disposition, regardless
of whether that destiny is regulated by the will of God, or by mechanical
causation.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
Hartmann strongly opposes this teleologicalorientation of old ontology.

In fact, he finds that the persistence of teleological thinking in modern
philosophy is one of the main reasons for the neglect of ontology; if the
world is going in a certain direction, if it is guided by an invisible hand
toward its predestined goal, why bother examining being as being? Why
not, instead, study the proclaimed and the processes leading to
its realization?
To counter this teleological mirage, Hartmann introduces the
distinction between an essential possibility of old ontology (as something
destined to be realized) and a real possibility (the realization of which
depends on whether all of its necessary conditions are satisfied). In real
being, or actual reality, only that whose conditions are all real is possible.
Hartmann thus eliminates the need for a teleological conception of a divine
being, as well as a purely mechanical determinism of the world. He refuses
to postulate in advance any pre-determination of the world. Instead, he
carries on with phenomenological method, according to which the world
is an open structure. It can, but need not, be determined. Or it can be
partially determined and partially undetermined. For example, a student
exceptionally gifted in philosophy may, but also may not, go on to graduate
school and become a professional philosopher. Whether or not that happens
depends on far more than the students gifts and predispositions. It may
depend on the encouragement (or lack thereof) by the students professors,
or pressure by the parents placed on the student to pursue a certain other
path, as well as other factors.
Hartmanns central position in regard to the modalities of being is this:
actual reality must in every case be considered to be the complex result of
a far-flung context of determinants.1 As the principle of sufficient reason
formulates, if any of the conditions is missing, something becomes really
impossible. In contrast, if the conditions are all fulfilled, something must
happen necessarily. Thus, all that is really possible is likewise real and
necessary, and all that is negatively possible is also unreal and
impossible. Actuality in the narrow and only true sense is only the real
actuality.2
Hartmanns consideration of the modalities of being leads to a new
formulation and justification of the principle of sufficient reason. Also, it
brings him to a new characterization of the nature of becoming, obligation,
and the puzzling ontological status of aesthetic objects (to which we will
return to in Part II).
1
2
Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, ch. III, 46.

Nicolai Hartmann, MglichkeitundWirklichkeit, 2nd edn (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1949), 57. For further discussion, see Rafael Hntelmann, Mglich ist nur das
Wirkliche: Nicolai Hartmanns Modalontologie des realen Sein (Dettelbach: Rll,
2000).
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ModificationsofBeing
25
The discussion of the moments of being, in terms of Daseinand Sosein,

represents one of the finest examples of Hartmanns novel approach to
ontology.3 His clarification of this fundamental ontological distinction
helps us see how dialectical thinking may lead to a fruitful chain of
reasoning, orwhen in the wrong handsto ever greater confusion
regarding the nature of the real. He believes that a misunderstanding of the
complex relation of Dasein and Sosein is responsible for countless
mistakes throughout the history of Western philosophy.
Like some other German expressions, the terms Dasein and Sosein
do not have elegant English translations. Dasein literally means that
something, some being, is present. It refers to the fact that something
is. Sosein, by contrast, points toward whatit is. The history of ontology
is full of erroneous convictions that the difference between Dasein and
Sosein corresponds to the distinction between existence and essence.
Hartmann maintains to the contrary that Sosein is not identical to
essence; it involves essential as well as nonessential characteristic of
what
is. Further, he denies that existence and essence can be ontologically
separated: existence is also essence, and essence is also existence.4 How
can that be possible?
Daseinand Soseinstand in opposition to each other as two
distinguishable moments of being. Nevertheless, they are both needed as
the characterizations of one and the same being. As Hartmann succinctly
states, There is no Sosein without Dasein and no Dasein without
Sosein.5 The two terms can be conceptually differentiated, but Dasein
and Sosein cannot be ontologically separated. Despite being deeply
interwoven, there is no direct and tautological identity between Dasein
and Sosein, even in the same thing. The relation is rather dialectical,
which, for Hartmann, means that the Dasein of a certain A is at the
same time the Sosein of a certain B, and the Soseinof that existent B is
at the same time the Dasein
of some C. For instance, the Daseinof a tree is the Soseinof a forest, for
without the tree the forest would not be the same. Further, the Daseinof
the forest is the Soseinof, say, a landscape; the Daseinof the landscape is
the Soseinof the earth, and so on. At the end of the chain, we come to the
3
4
5
Otto Samuel translates Dasein and Sosein as Hereness and Suchness; Otto
Samuel, A Foundation of Ontology: A Critical Analysis of Nicolai Hartmann
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 478. It is also possible to translate these
terms as that- ness and what-ness. For Heidegger, Daseinrefers to a manner of
Being, being- in-the-world, which reveals an incorrigible finitude in the very
manner of being. By contrast, Hartmann thinks of being in terms of the
complementary categorial pair: finiteinfinite.
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26
TheAnalysisofWonder
last member, the universe as a whole, about which we can only say that it
is (Dasein) but not how it is (Sosein).6
Here we see the difference of Hartmanns treatment in comparison
to the traditional philosophers. Without a proper appreciation of the
DaseinSosein distinction, the traditional philosophers perpetually
tried to determine the Sosein of the world as a whole by analogy to an
individual thing (res). They also attempted to elevate the Dasein of the
last link into some kind of higher (absolute, unconditional, etc.) being.
No such hierarchies of being are justified. What we must take away from
this distinction of Dasein and Sosein is that more than mere existence
belongs to the real, and that there is existence even outside of the real. This
directs us toward Hartmanns discussion of the real and ideal being, which
has turned out to be the most controversial of the three modifications of
being he discusses. Since it is also most important for all other parts of his
philosophical project, we will give it due attention.
It is obvious that there are real beings. They are phenomenologically
given to us as individual, unique, and temporally located. Many real beings
are also located in space (for instance inanimate objects), but not all of
them are. But, why believe that there is any other kind of being? Why
believe that there is any sphere of ideal being or, as Hartmann sometimes
also calls it, the ideal world? This is the central aporia of ideal being.
In long, and often futile, discussions over the nature of universals, ideal
being has been relegated either into things, concepts, or, in some cases, the
transcendent mind of God. Hartmann admits that there is no natural
consciousness of ideal being. Its existence is hidden, as it were, in the
background of real being. While real being imposes itself on us, ideal
being never does. This is why ideal being is so often denied, neglected, or
simply overlooked.
The first and most convincing indication that ideal being exists was
found in mathematics. From Platos belief in the significance of geometry
to Galileos dictum that the Book of Nature is written in mathematical
language, there has long been a conviction that mathematical principles
are not just concepts and ideas. They exist not as thoughts but as entities.
Besides mathematical principles, there are also logical principles.
Hartmann calls mathematical and logical principles formal essences,
in order to distinguish them from values, which (following Max Scheler)
he considers as material essences.
Ideal being manifests itself through multiple connections with real
being. To a significant degree, the world of real things obeys mathematical
6
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 19d, 1289.
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ModificationsofBeing
27
and logical principles; ideal values find their realization in this world. We
can hardly understand what human beings are, or what it means to have a
personality, without taking into account the various aspects of ideal being.
Hartmann holds that we can discover the structural properties of ideal
being even without their actualization in real being. Ideal being is open for
insight by a priori cognition. We can recognize ideal being a priori because
it is universal, nontemporal, and unchanging. From this point of view, it
appears that ideal being has a mode of existence independent of real being;
just as real being is indifferent to being cognized, ideal being is indifferent
to being actualized. This realization seduces Plato to consider ideal being
as
a higher form of being and ontologically superior to real being.
Plato goes too far. He overlooks the double aspect of the relationship of
real and ideal beings. Ontologically speaking, real beings have superiority
over ideal beings. Although indifferent toward their actualization and
epistemologically superior, without a proper actualization, ideal beings
float without real function. Thus, ideal beings are imperfect and
incomplete, unless tied to real beings. The key point is that these two
spheres of being, these two worlds, are not just disparate but also united;
they are two ways of being of the same world. In Hartmanns words,
Ideal being can be found in the basic structure of everything real.
Ontologically speaking, the whole sphere of the ideal is indifferent to
the sphere of the real. But the two spheres do not exist independently,
nor do we encounter them in mutual isolation. They are simple different
ways of being. What distinguishes them radically is the fact that
everything real is individual, unique, destructible; whereas everything
ideal is universal, returnable, always existing.7
We can now connect Hartmanns discussion of Dasein and Sosein to

the real and ideal being. It has been generally assumed that Dasein is an
existence that belongs to real being, while Sosein is, roughly, essence,
which belongs to the mode of ideal being. Although we find such ideas
maintained throughout the history of philosophy (even in Husserl!), they
are incorrect. The basic relationship of Dasein and Soseinis conjunctive,
while that of real and ideal being is disjunctive. The identity of Dasein
and Sosein is dialectical, not tautological. With regard to the real and the
ideal, they are not identical, either in the dialogical or tautological sense.
7
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 44b, 257. See Hartmann, DerAufbau

derrealenWelt, chs. 5560, 465510. Hartmanns most extensive treatment of Plato
is in PlatosLogikdesSeins(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965).
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Further insights may be gained by tying these distinctions on the

possibility of a priori and a posteriori cognition. In the spirit of Kant,
Hartmann argues that in an a priori manner we can know the ideal Sosein,
the ideal Dasein, and the real Sosein, but never the real Dasein. A
posteriori we can know the real Dasein and the real Sosein, but nothing
about ideal being.8
While philosophical attention is more often related to the ideal than
to real being, Hartmann urges us to focus on real being first. Real being
incorporates in its structures, in its combination of Dasein and Sosein,
ideal being as well. Real being poses the greatest challenge not only to
our knowledge but also to our feeling of values. Far deeper and far more
fundamental than purely cognitive acts are those that are emotionally
grounded. Despite the modern preoccupation with the mind and thinking,
Hartmann insists that our emotional responsiveness to reality is at the
bottom of all cognitive activity. The existence of isolated cognitive activity,
together with our traditional overestimation of the eternal and neverchanging, is a mirage. According to Hartmann,
[Cognitive activity] does not know what it desires. It takes a fantasy for
something real. This is why it lives removed from that which is truly
valuable. The real values of human life are always in the transitory,
they shine in the clear light in the movements of the real fulfillment.
That which is truly valuable in life cannot last, because it is real. And
if it were to last, then for man it would not shine with the light that
overshadows everything.9
From this initial discussion we can already sense that the central task of
Hartmanns ontological project is to lead us toward the rediscovery of
the real. He wants us to focus on the concrete and temporal entities. This
may be the first of a series of surprises that are awaiting us in the study
of Hartmanns philosophy. While ontology may have a reputation of an
abstract and disconnected discipline from the real world, its task is actually
to lead us away for the proverbial ivory tower of philosophy and toward
the richness and concreteness of the changing individual entities that
populate the real world.
8
9

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I.4
Strata of Real Being
For Hartmann, philosophy is anything but a trifling academic game.

Philosophical problems spring neither from idle curiosity, nor from
invented intellectual subtleties. They are enforced on us by phenomena
incontestable to all willing to observe and think carefully, to all who
have ever become aware of them. In Hartmanns words, And behind
the phenomena there is the world as it actually is, including man such
as he is.1
The primary concern of philosophy is the world as it actually is,
including man such as he is. In the terminology introduced earlier,
philosophys primary fascination must be with real being, not ideal being.
In the previous section we have observed how Hartmann dispels the
prejudice that being as being must refer to some higher, perfect form of
being. Here we will consider how he turns against an even older, perhaps
even more deeply rooted misconception that being as being must refer
to something immovable and unchanging. Also we will discuss his
understanding of the unity of being.
Hartmann claims that real being is becoming. Real being is changing,
temporal, and individual. And what is changing, temporal, and individual
cannot be rigid, motionless, and inimical to life. Nor can it be finished or
perfect in every respect. On the contrary, everything real is in motion; it
is in flux: Motion and becoming form the universal mode of being of the
real, no matter whether it be a question of material things, living forms, of
human beings.2
There is a multiplicity of forms of real being in their complex
developments and mutual interdependencies. We cannot expect to
understand all of these complexities, or that they are all unfolding
according to some super-rational master plan. Hartmann is categorical
in asserting that, not everything in the world of reality, perhaps only the
1
2
Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, ch. XI, 119.

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TheAnalysisofWonder
30
least part of it, is meaningful.3 Yet many of these complexities can be

untangled, at least partially, through a careful philosophical analysis. This
analysis of the complex makeup of real being is the subject of Hartmanns
most ambitious ontological work, TheStructureoftheRealWorld.
The crux of Hartmanns analysis consists in his opposition to all forms
of reductivism and dualism. He establishes a pluralistic view of reality,
with a dynamic interrelation of the four strata: the inorganic, the organic,
the psychic, and the spiritual. Before we come to his positive view, let us
consider some of his criticisms of monistic reductivism and exclusive
dualism. For instance, the world cannot be ruled either from below, or
from above. Identifying the real world with inorganic matter simply
cannot explain the diversity of the phenomena in the world, including
the organic, the psychic, and especially the spiritual. Nor is it possible to
explain everything by means of an all-pervasive spiritual principle. There
are aspects of reality that have nothing to do with anything spiritual and
they cannot be reduced without a great degree of sophistry to the ruling
principles of the spirit. Vitalism and psychologism fare no better as the
sole explanatory principles of reality.
The ontological tradition usually wavers between a monistic
reductivism and an exclusive dualism. Augustines dualism of the sinprone body and the God-given soul has dominated religious thinking.
Descartes dualism of the spatially extended, measurable, and mechanical
substance on the one hand, and the nonspatial, nonextended inner
thinking substance on the other, has had an even greater impact on
modern philosophical thinking. According to Hartmann,
In this dichotomy the true and the untrue are disastrously confused. It
is true that spatiality and materiality separate the two worlds of being
from each other, but the idea of man as an entity composed of two
heterogeneous substances has shown itself to be erroneous. The
human being as a whole is too much of an indivisible unity. His
activity, passivity and general condition are too obviously both
corporeal and psychic. And, above all, the very life of man consists
of an inseparable merging of the inner and the outer. Only an
imaginative belief in immortality can derive benefit from this
separation of substances. The real concrete life, with its constant
blending of the two spheres, is not to be understood in this manner.4
3
4
Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, ch. IV, 52.

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Notice how Hartmann always steers the ontological discussion toward

the nature of man and his role and place in reality. He may begin with
the most abstract of all questions (What is being as being?), but does not
restrict himself to abstractions. Indeed, how could he, when he thinks
of reality in terms of changing, temporal, and individual beings? And,
phenomenologically speaking, the most complex of such individual real
beings is man. When we observe human beings, we see most clearly that
the unity of being, as well as the unity of the real world, cannot be
explained through one substance, whatever that substance may be. In
human beings we find diversity that is nevertheless united, or, to put it
the other way around, unity in diversity or heterogeneity. The unity of
man, as well as the unity of the world, cannot be the unity of one
principle, of one substance, or of any one thing. It must be the unity of a
structure, complex as it is, and dynamically maintained. In man we
recognize the presence of the inorganic, the organic, the psychic, and the
spiritual layers.
We also find in man a dynamic interrelation not only between these
strata, but also within them. Opposition occurs between counteracting
forces at the level of the inorganic, the level of pure physical processes,
which (like action and reaction) are so related that they establish a
dynamic balance. The spontaneous forces of self-regulation (dissimilation
and assimilation) are at work to achieve a balance at the level of the living
organism.
As expected, the strongest forms of oppositions are encountered at the
most complex level: the level of the spiritual. At this level, balance is
created by neither the natural law nor a spontaneous self-regulation.
Balance depends on the freedom of human beings in the structurally
intertwined world.
Interconnectedness between different layers of the real world is even
more intriguing than dynamic tension within the same stratum. The
higher level is always built upon the lower and stronger one. It cannot
exist without the lower level supporting it. Thus, life cannot exist without
inorganic matter. Nor can the spirit somehow float in the world, without
being attached and dependent on the lower strata of reality. As we will see
later, this view consequently affects our understanding of morality and the
nature of personality.
Hartmanns central insight with regard to the interlevel relationships
of various strata is as follows. The lower levels of reality are the strongest,
the highest are the weakest. The lowest and the strongest levels are the
poorest, while the highest and the weakest are the richest. Although the
elements of the lower strata are carried on into the higher strata, they are
also transformed in the higher layers. Such transformations account for
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TheAnalysisofWonder
the ontological novelty of every higher level with regard to every lower
level.
Hartmanns account of how this happens is structurally similar to his
explanation of the dialectic of the Dasein and Sosein. He illustrates it
with the example of matter and form, perhaps the most misunderstood
of all ontological distinctions. Matter and form are not to be understood
in any absolute and static sense, neither in terms of an ultimate, insoluble
material principle, nor in terms of an isolated and elevated form. Form
and matter are relative in the sense that all form can be matter for a
higher form, and all matter can be form for a lower matter. The atom is
the matter of the molecules but is itself a formed structure. The molecule
is the matter of the cell, which in turn is the matter of multicelled
organism, and so on.
Besides this principle of dependency, the real world is also constructed
on the related but different principle of determination. We understand this
principle even less than the principle of dependency. For example, much
of our thinking about the principle of determination is in terms of causes
and effects. Yet they constitute only one form of determination. The basic
principle of determination is rather the modal principle of sufficient reason.
This principle affirms that nothing occurs in the world that does not have
its (sufficient) ground in something else. The principle of sufficient reason
is equally important for all strata of the real world. In the realm of thought,
just like in the inorganic realm, nothing exists by chance in the ontological
sense. Everything depends on some conditions and occurs only where
these are fulfilled. If all conditions are fulfilled, they form a sufficient
reason, and the event is bound to occur.
Human beings serve as the simplest and most convincing proof that
reality is both layered and dynamically united. Man is a participant not
only of the spatially extended inorganic and organic strata of reality, but
also of its nonspatial psychic and spiritual layers. He is endowed with
consciousness, as well as spirit. Modifying some insights of Hegel and
Dilthey, Hartmann distinguishes a personal spirit from an objective spirit,
which presents itself as a suprapersonal being manifested in institutions,
legal order, culture, religion, science, speech, and so on. He calls these
manifestations of the living and historically bounded supra-personal
spirit: objectified spirit. Hartmann avoids the prejudices of both
supra-individual substantialism and of extreme individualism by arguing
in favor of the reciprocity of the objective and the personal spirit.
Paraphrasing Kant, he maintains that without a personal spirit, an
objective spirit would be empty and devoid of content; while without
an objective spirit, a personal spirit would be irresponsible and blind.
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33
Now we can better understand why Hartmann insists that ontology

is a fundamental philosophical discipline. In his view, there can be no
anthropology without ontology, or the other way around.
The nature of man can be adequately understood only as the
integrated whole of combining strata and, furthermore, as placed
within the totality of the same order of strata which, outside of
man, determines the structure of the real world. Man cannot be
understood unless the world in which he lives and of which he is a
part is understood, just as the world cannot be understood without
an understanding of man that one member of the world to which
alone its structure is exhibited. This exhibition is the view of the
world which philosophy sketches.5
Hartmann, Neue Wege der Ontologie, ch. XI, 120. See Hartmanns books, Das
Problem des geistigen Seins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), ch. 6, 7988, and
Philosophieder Natur(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), 522ff.
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I.5
Categories of Real Being
In order to understand the nature of reality, we must comprehend its

dynamic and layered structure. In order to grasp this structure we
must discern the elements that compose it: the categories. Hence, as
the fundamental task of ontology, Hartmann establishes the following:
the determination of the categories characterizing each stratum of real
being, and of those that are common for all four strata. Our task now
is to discover the way he understands the nature and function of the
categories, what categories he identifies, and how he determines their
mutual relationship.
Like many other words taken from ordinary language and converted
into technical terms, the word category did not initially suggest anything
of philosophical relevance. The Greek noun means
accusation and predication. As a verb, it means to accuse ( means
against) someone at an assembly. Aristotle removes the negative
connotation and uses this word to refer to the most general ways in
which a subject-matter may be described. In a more technical sense, he
uses it to refer to the structuring that corresponds to the real existence
of things. He sometimes mentions three fundamental categories,
sometimes eight, but most famously ten: substance, quantity, quality,
relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection (or condition).
The Stoics recognize only four basic categories: subject, quality, state, and
relation. Modern philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and
Locke, focus on the triad: substance, mode, and relation.
Kant brings categories into prominence in Critique of Pure Reason.
He criticizes Aristotle for the random procedure he uses to collect the
categories, as well as mixing those belonging to sensibility with those
originating in a rational capacity. For Kant, categories are not mere
descriptions of what is given in experience but the principles (rules) for the
construction of the forms of experience. Only by means of the application
of these pure, a priori categorial concepts can we understand how anything
in the manifold of given appearances can be combined into and thought of
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TheAnalysisofWonder
36
as objects of our cognitive judgments. The categories are the foundation of

a systematic unity of our way of cognition.1
For Kant, the categories are not primarily the determinations of being;
they are not primarily ontological. Rather, they are epistemological
concepts. In his terminology, they are the concepts of the understanding
necessary for the synthesis of experience. Kant provides both the
metaphysical and the transcendental deduction of the categories, that
is, the proofs of their pure origin and objective validity. He
systematically presents them in four groups (quantity, quality, relation,
and modality), each of which contains exactly three subcategories
(unity, plurality, totality; reality, negation, limitation; substance and
accident, causality
and dependence, community; possibility
impossibility, existence nonexistence, necessitycontingency).
Hegels Logicopens the way for the development of ontology in terms
of a systematic analysis of the categories. He continues Kants analysis
of categories and significantly enriches our understanding of them by
liberating us from Kants unnecessary epistemological constraints. Unlike
Kant, Hegel goes back to the most primordial ontological concepts: being
and its opposite: nonbeing, or nothingness. Without these categories there
is no possibility of explaining the becoming, or the emergence of anything
new. In contrast to Kants static and a-temporal a priori concepts, the
categories become the principal means of development in Hegels dialectic.
This dialectic is the movement, even the essential unrest, of the concept.
Hegel feels obliged to bring this unrest to an end, to a definitive
conclusion. The tension between the thesis and the antithesis is thereby
overcome and the dialectical process ends in a higher synthesis. This
synthesis is not just the highest but also the lowest point of Hegels
thinking, insofar as he turns being into concept and concept into being:
the real is rational and the rational is real.
After Hegel, there has been a diverse development in the understanding
of categories. According to Hartmann, it has generally moved in a
mistaken direction, in the direction of their further subjectivization. For
example, Wilhelm Wundt asserts that categories represent the last stages
in every organization of the material of perception. For Hans Vaihinger,
they are only purposive fictions (als ob as if), which emerge from
practical purposes. For Edmund Husserl, categories are the simple and
not further dissolvable unities of meaning.
A few clarifications must be made before we turn to Hartmanns view.
Because there are many kinds of categories, from here on we will use
1
See, for instance, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (New York: Palgrave, 2003), A657/BB902, A7980/B1056.
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CategoriesofRealBeing
37
categories to refer exclusively to ontological categories, unless otherwise

noted. Even among the ontological categories there are some that belong
to all spheres of being (modal categories), some to the entire real world
(fundamental categories), and some to a specific level of reality
(special categories). Hartmann discusses the first group of these
ontological categories in Possibility and Actuality, the second in The
Structure of the Real World, and the third in Philosophy of Nature. We
will focus primarily on the fundamental and special categories, which
apply to the realm of real being.
Hartmann calls our attention to three typical
misconceptions
regarding categories. First, a category is usually not distinguished from
a concept of that category. Second, there is a lack of distinction between
ontological and epistemological categories. Third, there is an assumption
that categories of being must exist either in some linguistic or mentalistic
realm, or on their own. Hartmann denies both horns of this false dilemma.
Ontological categories exist only as the determinations of being; they are
immanent to real being. They are not applied to reality by the cognizing
mind, or by the competent users of language. Categories are inherent in
things themselves and in the events they determine. They articulate the
Sosein of real entities: their configurations, structures, and contents, but
not their existence.
Categories are the principles of real being insofar as they deal with
what is universal and necessary. Since every discipline aims at
uncovering its principles, ontology becomes centrally oriented on a
systematic analysis of categories. Hartmanns New Ways of Ontology
transforms the treatment of ontology that dominated from Aristotle
to Christian Wolff: from being a science of being as being,
ontology becomes a categorial analysis. In The Structure of the Real
World alone, Hartmann engages in an analysis of 58 ontological
categories. We cannot consider in any detail his individual findings,
but have to outline his general conception of categories.
Categories do not exist in isolation from other categories. Nor are they
limited in number. Thus, new ontology must endeavor to establish exactly
what categories are the basic determinants of each strata of real being. This
undertaking must also explain how categories of various strata interrelate
and co-determine each other.
Hartmann lists the categories of the inorganic, or the corporeal world,
as: space and time, process and condition, substantiality and causality, and
dynamic structures and dynamic equilibrium. The categories of animate
nature include: adaptation and purposiveness, metabolism, self-regulation,
self-restoration, the life of the species, and the constancy and variation of
the species. He establishes the categories of the psychic layer of reality as:
act
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TheAnalysisofWonder
38
and content, pleasure and displeasure, consciousness and unconsciousness.

Finally, the categories of the spirit are: thought, knowledge, will, freedom,
evaluation, and personality.
Unlike the categories specific for one stratum, the fundamental
categories (common for all strata of real being) came in pairs: principle
concretum; structuremodus; formmatter; innerouter; determination
dependence; qualityquantity; unitymanifoldness; harmonyconflict;
contrastdimension; discretioncontinuity; substratumrelation; element
structure.
There is no dominant category of one layer, nor is there a dominant
pair of categories that determines all the strata of real being. All categories
of one stratum jointly determine everything and share in all particulars.
The fundamental categories are so related that in every pair each of the
categories presupposes its counterpart, and is in turn presupposed by it.
For example, form presupposes matterfor it must be the form of some
matterand matter is what it is only as a matter of some form that shapes
and structures it.
The categories of each stratum are interrelated in a homogeneous
way from within. The categories of various strata are interrelated in a
heterogeneous way from without. The categories of a lower stratum are
superior with regard to their strength in comparison to the categories
of any higher stratum. Yet they are poorer in terms of their structure.
Hartmann sometimes uses the technical terms super-information and
super-imposition to clarify the relations of the categories belonging to
various strata. The former term refers to the penetration from down up,
the integration of the categories of a lower stratum into the categories of
a higher stratum, and their modification on a new level. The latter phrase
means that the categories of a lower stratum provide a basis or ground for
the buildup on the categories of a higher stratum, as well as a limitation or
constraint for this buildup. The super-information and the superimposition
thus guarantee the recurrence and categorial continuity among various
strata of real being. They also account for a novelty at each higher stratum,
which secures the diversity of the strata.
In The Structure of the Real World, Hartmann formulates the most
important intercategorial relationships as the four categorial laws:
1. The law of validity: categories have their being as structures of

concrete things and apart from these they have no validity.
2. The law of coherence: categories have no isolated existence for

themselves, but are determined and united by the whole categorial
structure.
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CategoriesofRealBeing
39
3. The law of hierarchical order: categories of the lower strata

are contained in the higher, but not the other way around.
4. The law of dependence: the dependence of categories is

asymmetrical, with the higher categories dependent on the lower,
though their categorial novelty is thereby not limited.2
Hartmanns comprehensive categorial analysis consists neither in purely a
priori knowledge, nor in its purely a posteriori counterpart. It presupposes
the whole breadth of human experience, from everyday life to the most
elaborate scientific research. It also relies on philosophical experience as
recorded in the historical development of human thought, as a long series
of attempts and proposals, disappointments and self-corrections. This
entire sum of accumulated experience and critical insights furnishes a
starting point for our categorial analysis.
This grand project of the accumulation of all human experience and
thought leads Hartmann to three convictions. The first amounts to a
recognition of the rootedness of real being. Like the segments of a tree,
the higher strata are rooted in the lower. All the strata are interconnected,
without being reducible to each other. Second, the ontological principles
must somehow be included in being. Consequently, it must be possible
to discern them, at least to a degree, if only a sufficiently broad basis of
ontological data is supplied. The third conviction takes a dialectical turn in
a somewhat opposite direction. No matter how far our categorial analysis
takes us, regardless of how systematically it is undertaken, its pursuit will
lead to no definitive knowledge. It will only lead to further realizations of
the wonders of the world and the limits of our rationality. As Hartmann so
memorably wrote:
Every deeper grasping of some category is at the same time the
discovery of some deeper problem. In our attempts toward solutions
our problems increase, and with them also our wonder in front of the
ungraspable [Unbegreiflich]. If anywhere, than in the investigation of
the categories it must become clear that the ultimate meaning of the
philosophical cognition is not so much the solution of the puzzles as
the exposure of wonder [einAufdeckungvonWunder].3
Hartmann, DerAufbauderrealenWelt, chs. 5560, 465510. For further discussion,

see Roberto Poli, Hartmanns Theory of Categories: Introductory Remarks, in
ThePhilosophyofNicolaiHartmann, ed. R. Poli, C. Scognamiglio, and F. Tremblay,
132.
Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, ch. 34d, 264.
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I.6
Categories of Being and

Categories of Cognition
Man knows things by means of his categories, but he does not need
a knowledge of these categories for the purpose. This is Hartmanns
fundamental view. He further explains: Knowledge of categories does
not come until epistemology develops, but knowledge of things does
not have to wait for epistemology.1
Hartmann follows Plato and Aristotle in the conviction that epistemology

does not come before ontology, nor can it replace ontology. Our
commonsense knowledge and scientific practices are based on the premise
that the world is what it is, whether we know of it or not. The natural
direction of our attention is toward things, toward cognizing what the
world is like. Hartmann calls this primal attitude: intentiorecta.
Owing to a collapse of the ancient and medieval worldviews, Descartes
redirects the course of the traditional thinking. Instead of focusing on
what we (can) know, philosophers become preoccupied with a meta-level
inquiry: How do we know that we know? The cognizing mind becomes
the fixation of modern philosophers. We search not so much for
knowledge, but for the knowledge of knowledge. In Hartmanns
terminology, our attention turns away from reality, away from being. It
turns toward the analysis of our thoughts about being; from intentio
rectatoward intentio obliqua.2
Kant plays a twofold role in this process. First, he brings this selfreflective attitude of the mind to its highest point in his CritiqueofPure
Reason. Second, his analysis of how we cognize, of our knowledge of
1
2
Hartmann, DerAufbauderrealenWelt, ch. 12a, 118.

See Hartmann, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, ch. 3d and passim. Michael
Landmann explains this fundamental distinction in terms of two opposite
metaphysical orientations: the world oriented and the subject (mind) oriented; see his
Philosophical Anthropology, trans. D. J. Parent (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1974), 625.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
knowledge, reveals that there are not only temporal but insurmountable
boundaries of human cognition. Critique is the highest point not only
of our knowledge of knowledge, but also of our knowledge of ignorance.
Among those things that we cannot know are the answers to the eternal
metaphysical questions we long to know the most: the existence of
God, the immortality of the soul and the possibility of freedom. Kant
simultaneously develops Western intellectualism to its highest peak and
leads it to the brink of collapse.
Kants intention is not to destroy metaphysics. His aim is to replace
the old, speculative and untenable way of doing metaphysics with a new
way that would make it scientifically respectable. In this process, he
accomplishes a number of remarkable achievements but also commits a
series of far-reaching mistakes. Among Kants greatest accomplishments
are the discovery of the antinomies of pure reason and the deduction of
categories. Both accomplishments are based on Kants rephrasing of the
old and neglected question in a bold and imaginative way: How are
synthetic a priori judgments possible?
A priori is a way of knowledge independent of experience.
Mathematics has always been best evidence of this. In magical ways, we
can anticipate that the real world must conform to certain pure insights,
especially with regard to some quantifiable relations. Yet there are many a
priori judgments that are not mathematical, judgments that have nothing
to do with quantities. Metaphysical assertions belong to such synthetic
a priori judgments. The antinomies reveal not only that we can form
contradictory metaphysical assertions (e.g., God exists and God does
not exist), but also that we can produce evidenceproofsthat seems
equally supportive of them.
In an attempt to understand how we make any synthetic judgments at
all, and then what would make such judgments objectively valid (rather
than antinomical), Kant rediscovers the categories. While it seems that
objects are ontologically prior to our cognitions and that our
knowledge must conform to these objects, it is really the objects that
turn around us, the cognitive subjects. In order to be known, these objects
must conform to our forms of intuition (space and time) and our
categories. Kant formulates this insight as the highest principle of all
synthetic judgments: the conditions of the possibility of experience in
general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of
experience.3
Hartmann is convinced that Kant is right about arguing that only
the identity of the categories of being and the categories of cognition can
3
Kant, CritiqueofPureReason, A158/B197.
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CategoriesofBeingandCategoriesofCognition
43
provide satisfactory explanation for the possibility of synthetic judgments.

More generally, only their identity can provide an acceptable account of the
puzzling metaphysical wonder that occurs in every cognitive experience:
the interaction of the mind and the world. Yet Hartmann puts a twist on
Kants fundamental realization: even though it is true that only the identity
of principles can bridge the duality of subject and object without
abolishing them, nevertheless, it is irrelevant whether these principles
are primarily principles of the object or of the subject, or stand neutrally
above both of them.4
There are various reasons for Kants acceptance of an unnecessarily
subjectivist interpretation of the highest principle of all synthetic
judgments. One of them is that, like Wolff before him and Hegel after
him, Kant does not make a significant distinction between categories
(themselves) and our concepts of categories. Our concepts of categories
are our attemptspartially adequate and complete, partially notto
grasp the categories and their interrelations. The categories themselves
are indifferent to being known and captured conceptually.
In Hartmanns view, Kant also does not separate the categories of
cognition from the known categories; he confuses the principles that
make knowledge possible and the known principles. This is the mistake
of the entire epistemological turn of modern philosophy. In an embryonic
form, it is already visible in Descartes conviction that he cannot have any
knowledge about the world unless he proves the skeptical arguments as
unfounded.
This modern epistemological turnwhich prioritizes the reflection of
the conditions of the possibility of cognition over the investigation of
the nature of objects of cognition, the intentio obliqua over the intentio
rectahas turned us away from ontology. There are numerous problems
with this epistemological twist. First, there is no valid reason to believe
in a complete overlap of ontological and epistemological categories; since
consciousness represents only one realm of being, and the objects to
be known belong to all strata of being, it is quite possible that there can
be many more ontological than cognitive categories. Second, it is not at
all clear that the principles of the cognitive subject would be more
knowable, or more easily accessible, than the principles of the objects.
Indeed, even if the principles of subject were known, would that
necessarily explain the principles that govern the object? Finally, and
most paradoxically,
4
Hartmann, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, ch. 17b, 151. For further
discussion, see L. W. Beck, Nicolai Hartmanns Criticism of Kants Theory of
Knowledge, PhilosophyandPhenomenologicalResearch, 2:1942, 472500.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
the epistemological deviation from the normal course of investigation

leads to a subsequent abandonment of the strictly epistemological
question. This question deals with the relation of subject and object in
the cognitive experience, and it is replaced by either psychologism or
logicism. In the language of contemporary analytic philosophy, this shift
leads either toward epistemology naturalized or toward the analysis of
knowledge in terms of Gettier-like necessary and sufficient conditions of
knowledge.5
Let us, however, return to the topic more pertinent in this context. For
Kant, human reason is not a thing among things, or a being among beings.
So he needs to postulate something like consciousness in general (or a
transcendental subject) as the carrier of the entire cognitive edifice. He
thinks he needs it as the source and the applier of all categorial
determination to the appearances given to us. On the other side of the
transcendental subject, Kant must postulate a thing as it is in itself. That
is, he postulates a being independent of and indifferent toward the
conditions under which it appears to us. Without postulating such a thing
in itself, he suspects that genuine cognitive experience is no different than
illusion.
Hartmann argues that if we think outside of the Kantian framework, we
must wonder again: Just what is reason? What could a transcendental and
cognizing subject be, if not a being among beings? Are not even cognition
and a subjects consciousness also forms of being? In German, unlike
English, even ordinary language points toward the connection of cognition
and being: the German word for consciousness is Bewutsein, which
clearly has its root in Sein, which means being. Consciousness is a being
that is aware of other beings.
Kant is right to claim that reason is not a thing among things. Does
this mean, however, that reason is not a being among beings? The whole
language of things, which we have inherited from the Parmenidean
Aristotelian way of thinking, is rendered dubious not only by the
exaggerated focus on reason and subjectivity, but even by thinking
about the thing in itself. What is this mysterious thing in itself? It may
be understandable in its negative sense (its concept being a limiting
concept), but it is quite puzzling in a positive sense. If it is a thing, then
it should be determinable by means of the categories that reason applies
to all other things (objects) that provide the material for experience and
thinking. By Kants definition, however, that cannot be the case.
5
For further discussion, inspired by Hartmann, see Predrag Cicovacki, Anamorphosis:

Kant on Knowledge and Ignorance (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1997), ch. 1, 1747.
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CategoriesofBeingandCategoriesofCognition
45
Hartmann deviates from Kant with regard to the thing in itself. It is a

being, and it is exactly what we canknow, if cognition is to be possible at
all. Our knowledge is not about how things appear, but about how they
are. According to Hartmann, being is the common sphere in which
subject and object stand over against each other.6 There is no valid reason
for pushing anything outside of the sphere of being, neither any alleged
transcendental subject, nor some unknowable thing in itself. Knowers are
existents; they are real beings, just as the things and events they attempt
to know are existent and real. Principles of cognition are . . . ontological
principles, which is possible only if cognition itself has a being, is a kind
of being.7
This is one of the most important implications of Hartmanns thesis
of the continuity of all being. Now we can grasp the relevance of the
fundamental categories, the categories common for all strata of real being.
Such categories are transformed at each new layer. Nevertheless, enough
remains structurally the same throughout such transformations, enough to
guarantee the possibility of a unity of all being.
The unity of all being is the unity amidst heterogeneity, diversity,
complexity, and conflict. This unity is not the unity of things, of the
static forms of being, but the unity of structures in the turmoil of various
interconnections. Real being is not the being of separate and discontinuous
things. This being is the being of related, interpenetrating structures and
principles, the unity of the categorial co-determinations. Real being is the
being in becoming. The real world, we can say in Hartmanns name, is a
structured chaos.
According to this dynamic conception of real being, there is no
imposition of principles from below or from above, from the subject or
from the object. Hartmann thereby avoids the mistake of ascribing to
the lower strata the categories characteristic of the higher strata (as in
spiritualism and psychologism). He also avoids the error of subsuming
the categories of the higher strata to those of the lower strata (as in
mechanicism and vitalism). There is no need for the completeidentity of
the categories throughout the entire sphere of real being, which is the
assumption that led to these two types of fallacious reasoning.
This is the crucial point in which Hartmann corrects Kant and
subject-oriented philosophy. It is not necessary to postulate a complete
identity of the categories in order to justify our belief in the unity of
all being. Of course, if we wholly deny the identity of the categories,
6
7
Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, ch. 14b, 138.

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TheAnalysisofWonder
we cannot explain this unity. But their partial identity is sufficient

to account for it. Kants thesis, that the conditions of the possibility
of experience are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of
objects of experience, can be accepted without being interpreted in the
subjectivist way. Since cognitive subject is part of the overall being,
the conditions of the possibility of cognition can be interpreted in an
objective, mind-independent way.
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I .7
Ontology of Cognition
Hartmann speaks of cognition in terms of Erfassung, which can be

translated as grasping. The subject reaches out to grasp the object.
As a verb, to grasp makes us think of grasping by a hand, of seizing, and
holding. Hartmann reminds us that there is not just physical but also
mental grasping.
Cognition is not creation of any kind, as Neo-Kantians come to
believe, by radicalizing Kants transcendental idealism and rejecting the
thing in itself. In cognitive experience, counters Hartmann, an object is
not created. An object is a Gegenstand, something that stands against
the cognizing mind and shows resistance (Widerstand) to its ideas and
anticipations. An object of cognition is entirely indifferent to being
known. The cognitive relation does not change the nature of the object.
Our grasping of this indifferent object is never complete. The real being
we confront is not exhausted by that which is given to our consciousness
and reproduced by it. Although its comprehension is the ultimate aim of
our cognition, we never grasp the concretum in its fullness, but at best
certain immediate determinations of the concretum as such; that is why
this
source of cognition has the dignity of the testimony of reality.1 Real being
is richer than the sphere of the given and the grasped.
The grasping of any real being involves both a posteriori and a priori
aspects. These aspects speak two different languages, but they speak of
the same thing.2 The a posteriori aspect aims at the object in its
individuality and contingency. The a priori aspect reaches only as far as
the general and necessary. The boundaries between a priori and a
posteriori, as well as those between spontaneity and receptivity, thinking
and intuition, are far more blurred than Kant assumes. Even in a
posteriori cognition we cognize something general. This generality is,
however, not the same generality that
1
2

Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, ch. 57c, 441.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
we cognize by means of a priori cognition (that is, generality as necessity

and universality). For example, we cognize the property of red as a general
property of an individual object. There is no sensible property that in itself
does not contain something general in this sense, as Aristotle and Hegel
have documented.
A priori cognition also involves an element of receptivity, which is
different than the one that occurs in a posteriori cognition. It is similar with
spontaneity, which Kant reserves exclusively for a priori cognition. Every
active directing of the subject toward his objects, be they knowable a priori
or a posteriori, is a spontaneous act. This spontaneity does not exclude
the receptive element, nor is only receptivity characteristic of a posteriori
cognition.
In Hartmanns view, the distinctions between a priori and a
posteriori, thinking and intuition, and spontaneity and receptivity,
are epistemologically of secondary importance. Fascination with these
distinctions is a reflection of the shift from the intentio recta toward the
intentio obliqua, of the modern distortion of the cognitive phenomenon.
The distortion is responsible not only for the prioritization of these
distinctions, but also for the neglect of the truly significant elements of
cognition.
To clarify this view, Hartmann distinguishes four aspects of cognition:
the psychological, the logical, the ontological, and the epistemological.
The first of them deals with the question of psychological form with
regard to the reaching of the cognitive subject. The second concerns
the problem of the logical comprehension of the grasped object. The
third investigates the ontological status of the object and the subject.
The fourth and most important is the problem of the subjects reaching out
toward the object: the problem of grasping as such.
Hartmann further groups these four aspects into two general classes:
the psychological and the logical aspects deal with the nonmetaphysical
side of the cognitive relation. The ontological and the epistemological
concern its metaphysical segment. The epistemological turn of modern
philosophy shifts our attention toward its nonmetaphysical aspects.
Hartmann, by contrast, argues that the heart of the issue is in the
metaphysical side of cognition. He also mentions that the ontological
and the epistemological aspects are not only indispensible but also
complimentary. This is why he attempts to develop a metaphysics of
cognition.3
3
Nicolas Berdyaev praises Hartmann for insisting on this view; see his TheBeginning
andtheEnd, trans. R. M. French (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 42.
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OntologyofCognition
49
What is wrong with the nonmetaphysical and anti-ontological turn

of modern philosophy? In short, it misses the very cognitive relation
between the subject and the object that it purports to explain. Instead of
cognitive relation proper, it focuses either on the processes in the subject
(psychologism), or on the ideal structures of the object (logicism).
Since all cognition is conditioned by the subject, it may appear that
cognition has its roots in a general process of consciousness and the
principles determining this process. When drawing this conclusion, we
are prone to turn the problem of cognition into a psychological problem.
While it is clear that every structure of cognition has its psychological
genesisremember the early modern discussions of the ultimate origin of
knowledgethis genesis cannot explain the structure of cognition itself.
Whether in its classical form (rationalism and empiricism), or in its modern
counterpart (such as epistemology naturalized), psychologism remains too
narrowly focused on the psychological acts and processes that happen in
the subjects consciousness. It neglects the relationship with something
existing outside and independently of any consciousness. Psychologism
misses the relationship with the object.
The problem of the structure of cognition is taken seriously by
logicism. This orientation ignores the individual psychological processes
by means of which a subject comes to know any object and focuses on the
ideal structure of that object. It directs attention to the logic of cognition,
to what makes our cognition objective. Regardless of whether this logic
is transcendental (as in Kant), dialectical (as in Hegel), or formal (as in
analytic epistemology), in logicism the move is always made in the same
direction: first from the laws of logic to the laws of thinking, and then from
the laws of thinking to the laws of real being.
While these logical structures are required to explain the objectivity of
our cognition, and however important the logical structures of thinking
imposed on the object of cognition are, they fail to grasp the essence of the
phenomenon of cognition. Logicism creates rational constructs that stand
outside of real cognition. Because the rational is traditionally identified
with knowledge, and knowledge is understood in close association
with judgments, philosophers are prone to overestimate its relevance
for the cognitive relation. They focus unduly on internal coherence and
underestimate the nonrational and nonjudgmental aspects of knowledge.
They also neglect the ontological status of the actual object and the
cognitive nature of the subjectobject relationship.
Cognition is a relation between ones consciousness and its object. As
such, it transcends consciousness. This relation also goes beyond the mere
logical structures that must be applicable to any object, in order for it to
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TheAnalysisofWonder
become an object of our thinking. The product of consciousness can never

be similar to anything outside of consciousness. Nevertheless, the product
of consciousness must represent its object as it is. It must somehow capture
and repeat the determinations of its object, which exists independently of
the consciousness representing it.
Cognition is a result of the confrontation of the subject and the object,
of the knower and the known. They each exist on their own, so that
their confrontation must have an indispensable ontological element. The
cognitive relation is rooted in an ontological relation. While knowledge
belongs to a conscious being, its objects are positioned out among all strata
of being. We have already seen how Hartmanns new ontology explains
the relationship between various strata of real being, their difference
(in the form of the categorial novelty) without denying their continuity (in
the form of the categorial recurrence). Now we have to pay more attention
to what Hartmann calls the epistemological aspect of cognition.
The result of cognition is something third, different from the subject
and the object. It is also irreducible to them. Thus, this something third
has a peculiar relation to each of them: according to its ontological sphere
and psychological origin, it belongs to the subject and can be modified
by it. With the object, it shares the form of objectivity and a predictable
pattern of behavior. This further thing, a representation of the relation
of the subject and the object, is a constitutive element of the cognitive
relation. It is also the source of a great aporia: If the subject and the object
are so different, if the gap between them seems so unbridgeable, how can
the subject reach toward the object and gain an adequate representation
of it?
Grasping the object by the subject must involve some fundamental
overlapping and correspondence.4 Overlapping and correspondence do
not presuppose their similarity. The products of consciousness can never
be similar to any out-of-consciousness paradigms. They must, nevertheless,
represent them faithfully. While the dog that I see may be furry and black,
my representation of a dog is neither furry nor black. Yet, it must be a
representation of this particular dog, and not of any other. If it is not, then
the concepts of truth and illusion lose their meaning. Indeed, the whole
relation of cognition loses its primary function.
Hartmann explains the correspondence in question in terms of a partial
identity of the categories of being and the categories of cognition: only if
4
As Nicolai Hartmann puts it elegantly in Ethik, Truth is the objective agreement

(bereinstimmung) of thought, or conviction, with the existing situation; ch. 50g,
[II, 281]. See Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, chs. 5h, 6e, 7e,
and 557; and Die Erkenntnis im Lichte der Ontologie (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1982), ch. 3, 1524.
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OntologyofCognition
51
these two coincide can thought hit off being. The secret is in the
recurrence of [ontological] categories of lower strata in the structure of
the intelligent spirit.5
The categories of the lower strata recur in the content of knowledge of
the higher strata. This recurrence accounts for the possibility of
coordination between the subject and the object, so that the former
can adequately represent the latter, despite their difference and
independence. Hartmann calls it a reduplication of the categories in
the cognitive relationship: The same categories confront each other in
the object and the subject: in the object as categories of the real, in the
subject as categories of content only.6
The details of such a reduplication of the categories are not only
baffling but also, for the most part, inaccessible to us. As Kant already
realized, it may be easier to explain such reduplication in the realm of
quantitative categories. How it happens with all other (nonquantitative)
categories is yet to be comprehended. Although Kant errs in his turn
toward logicism in his explanation of the possibility of cognition,
Hartmann believes that his account of the possibility of all synthetic
judgments is still valuable:
If we now remember that the a priori element of knowledge depends
on the identity of cognitive and ontological categories and that the
limits of this identity are also the limits of apriorism, the modification
of this recurrence becomes a matter of considerable importance. For
epistemologically it becomes a real task to define with precision for
every particular case the deviation from the ontological category.
Obviously this cannot be done summarily for all categories but only
by detailed analysis, the factor of deviation from the corresponding
category of the real being a different one in every cognitive category.7
Instead of a general deduction of all categories in Kants style, Hartmann

thus proposes a detailed analysis for every single category. He does not
complete this project, but the general orientation of his account is as clear
as it appears irrefutable. Epistemology presupposes ontology (to account
for the resistance of the real), just as ontology presupposes epistemology
(for the sake of categorial analysis). They are mutually conditioning,
even though such conditioning need not be of the same kind, or equally
valuable.
5
6
7
Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, ch. XIII, 133.

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I.8
Critique of Intellectualism
Hartmann is particularly interested in four distinguishable aspects of

cognition:
1. Cognition as a relation of the subject and the object

2.
(= the cognitive relation).

Cognition as a representation of the object in the subject
(= the product of cognition).
3. Cognition as a correspondence of the representation with its object

4.
(= the truth of cognition).

Cognition as the tendency of representations to become more and
more adequate to the full content of their objects (= the progress of
cognition).
The thesis of the dependency of epistemology on ontology means that

the ultimate source of the cognitive relation is rooted on the other side
of cognition and cognizability, where it is not anymore confronted by
the subject. In the distance from the subject, the object is nothing but an
independently existing being. When the limit of cognition is left behind
and there is only an ontological being in its indifference, this ultimate
source of cognition is exactly the being as it is in itself.
Hartmanns ontological view undermines the deeply ingrained
epistemological optimism of the Western intellectual tradition. The
expectation that everything that exists must at least in principle be
knowable, coupled with an exaggerated faith in the power of the human
intellect, we can call intellectualism. The tendency of intellectualism is
to assume a complete, or near complete, identity of the sphere of the
logical, the rational, and the real. Hartmanns counters that the three
spheres cannot be treated as overlapping, because they each have their
own principles, which differ not only in numbers, but are also of
dissimilar, mutually irreducible natures.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
Hartmanns criticism of intellectualism targets its exaggerated faith in

the power of the intellect in its various aspects. Intellectualism postulates
the existence of harmony: (i) within the intellect, (ii) between being and
thought, and, subsequently, (iii) within being itself.
Against (i), Hartmann warns that the intellect leads to distortions when
separated from other nonrational functions of the subject. He is persistent
in his protest against the artificial separation of cognitive relation from the
broader life-nexus: Emotional awareness of reality lies at the bottom of all
cognitive activity.1
With regard to (ii), Hartmann argues that there is only a partial identity
of the categories of being and the categories of thinking. Such partial
identity is sufficient to account for the possibility of knowledge of the real
world. It is insufficient, however, to ensure that everything that exists must,
even in principle, be known.
After his careful consideration of (iii), Hartmann does not deny
the existence of the structure of being, but argues that its structure
must be understood in the way of categorial co-dependencies and
interdependencies, in a dynamic manner that does not exclude conflict.
The view that being is itself in disharmony and that conflict is its form
of being may well be the most important insight of Hartmanns entire
ontological opus.
Hartmann traces the sources of intellectualism to the postulates
that (i) all being is harmoniously structured, and that (ii) this structure
is knowable at least in principle. Throughout the history of Western
philosophy these two assumptions are usually either accepted together, or
rejected together. Even the twentieth-century philosophers, such as Husserl
and Cassirer, believe that because we must accept that being is structured,
we have also to assume that it is rational and knowable. On the opposite
side of the spectrum, there are more and more contemporary philosophers
who, like Bergson and Gadamer, believe that we must deny the rationality
and knowability of all being, and are therefore also forced to question its
mind-independent structure.
In opposition to both camps, Hartmann follows an unusual,
insufficiently tested path. He accepts that being is always structured and
ordered, but rejects the thesis of its complete rationality and knowability.
The ontological categories do not fully coincide with the epistemological
categories. This is the case with both real and ideal being. For example,
real being is structured, and this structure (inherent in being) can be
understood in terms of the plurality of ontological layers and its categorial
1
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CritiqueofIntellectualism
55
determination. This structure is dynamic and bi-linear: the lower and

stronger strata provide the roots of all being in the way that preserves
the recurrence of the categories of the lower strata in the higher layers.
Consciousness and spirit do not float in thin air and exist on their own.
They are rooted in the same categories that ground the lower strata: there
is no consciousness and spirit without the inorganic and the organic
layers and their categorial determinations. The structure of real being is
bi-linear because, despite their dependence on the lower layers, the higher
and weaker strata have the elements of novelty that cannot be reduced to
the grounding elements of the lower strata. For Hartmann, dependency
and independence always go together. The same goes for rationality and
irrationality, knowability and unknowability, and all other categorial
pairs.
This is a radically new way of thinking about reality. Predictably, like
all such novelties, Hartmanns dialectical ontology draws criticisms from
both opposing camps. Those who accept the structure and knowability of
being accuse him of giving up too quickly on rationality. Those who reject
the knowability and inherent structure of being see, in his view, an attempt
to preserve the kind of rationality that we do not have. Let us look at some
examples of both kinds of objections.
Cassirer grants to Hartmann that, while phenomenologically body
and soul are one, ontologically we cannot explain their unity. Our central
ontological categories have always been those of substance and cause, but
these categories are incapable of articulating how this mysterious unity
occurs. However philosophers attempt to explain the relationship of body
and soul, there always remains some metaphysical reminder that defies
rational thought. Cassirer admits that:
It is the essential merit of Nicolai Hartmann to have grasped this
situation with his characteristic acuteness and rigor and to have stated
it without reserve. In his metaphysics of knowledge Hartmann no
longer undertakes, like the older metaphysical systems, to dispel this
twilight: he attempts solely to disclose it. He no longer seeks to solve
the riddles of metaphysics at any price but contents himself with
stating them clearly and fully. Thus for him aporetics becomes an
essential component of metaphysics.2
Cassirers criticism is that, despite his acute diagnoses of the problem,

Hartmann makes an incorrect inference. He does not infer a deficiency of
2
Ernst Cassirer, ThePhilosophyofSymbolicForms, Vol. 3, ThePhenomenonof

Knowledge, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1957),
97.
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the categories we rely on (substance and causality), but an irrationality of

being. He shifts the incomprehensibility and contradiction into the core of
reality itself.3
Cassirers words were first published in 1929, and written probably
a few years earlier. At that time Hartmann had no book on ontology.
Cassirers presentation relies on Hartmanns book, Basic Elements of
a Metaphysics of Knowledge (published in 1921) and his essay, How is
Critical Ontology Possible? (published in 1924, in a collection edited by
Cassirer himself).4 He can thus be excused for claiming that Hartmann
does not see the deficiency of our central categories. Hartmann later
provides perhaps the most comprehensive and original categorial analyses
in the history of Western philosophy that demonstrates that there is no
such deficiency within categories themselves. We must look for the
source of our difficulties elsewhere.
Let us thus focus on the second part of Cassirers criticism: Hartmann
shifts the contradiction into the core of reality itself. Strictly speaking,
contradictions occur in thought, not in reality. Contradiction is a logical,
not an ontological category; it belongs to ideal, not real being. What
occurs in reality is oppositions and conflicts. Structure and order do not
imply harmony. Nor does unity presuppose harmony. Being is not a
closed and static system, built in accordance with some rationally
constructed chain of being. Being is becoming, a complex dynamical
system in which there is a structure that establishes (and re-establishes)
an always-temporary equilibrium among various strata and aspects of
being.
Conflict is the form of being, which is why philosophical thinking
leads to aporias. This is also why no genuine antinomy can be resolved,
and why we have to accept the limits of rationality. Hartmann should
not be accused of turning against rationality, however, nor as being a
proponent of irrationalism. As Nicholas Berdyaev expresses it in a spirit
similar to Hartmann, Antinomy and anti-thesis are by no means evidence
of weakness of mind. On the contrary through its fixing of boundaries it
represents a great achievement of reason.5
The fixing of boundaries of reason allows Hartmann to claim a limited
harmony of being, understood in a way that does not exclude that the
structure of being is partially irrational. As it is, this structure is sufficient
to enable a dynamic equilibrium of being, as well as our pursuit of
3
4
Cassirer, ThePhilosophyofSymbolicForms, Vol. 3, 97.

Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie berhaupt mglich? in FestschriftfrPaul
Natorp(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1924), ed. E. Cassirer, 12477.
Berdyaev, TheBeginningandtheEnd, 24.
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57
objective knowledge. Hartmanns view does not leave any room for doubt
that there are cracks both in the cosmic egg and the rational mind
exploring it. We habitually refuse to confront those cracks and limitations.
Our expectations blind us for the resistance of reality that our ideas and
theoretical constructs encounter, and we conveniently patch them over. We
have learned that, even in the face of recalcitrant reality, we can produce
some ad hoc (and ad hominen) arguments that save the phenomena
and our theoretical constructs by preserving their internal coherence. In
inventing more and more sophisticated theoretical constructs, which have
to pass the criterion of internal coherence, we remove ourselves further
away from what is given and what reality is like. For a philosopher of
Hartmanns integrity, however, that is simply unacceptable. Our quest is
not for certainty but for reality as it is, in all of its mind-boggling and
wondrous inconsistencies and tensions.
Philosophers like Gadamer praise Hartmanns refusal to follow
abstract theoretical constructs, but criticize him from a different
perspective. Gadamer does not complain about Hartmanns shrinking
of the radius of rationality; he thinks that its limits are far narrower than
Hartmann asserts. More importantly, he charges that Hartmann misses
some essential features of the nature of human rationality. Hartmann
wants to eliminate the inaccuracies of the past once and forever and
approaches philosophical problems from a neutral point of view, from
this side of idealism and realism. He imagines that we can practice
philosophy, or any kind of thinking, with a minimum of metaphysics,
and that there are eternal philosophical problems. Gadamer argues that
his one-time teacher is not just old-fashioned, but misguided. True,
human rationality is embodied in emotions, intuitions, and human
expectations. Hartmann fails to recognize, however, that it is also
embodied in socialpractices, with all of their accompanying prejudices.
This is not a reason for concern, proclaims Gadamer, for prejudices
are conditions of understanding. It is high time to liberate ourselves
not from the prejudices of the past, but from our prejudice against
prejudice.6
Hartmann rejects the Aristotelian metaphysics of realms (ontology,
cosmology,
theology,
psychology),
aswellastheolddeductiveandspeculative metaphysics. He attempts to
develop new ways of ontology based on the
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn, trans. J. Weinsheimer and
D. G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1993), 277. Scheler voices a similar
criticism of Hartmann in the Preface for the third edition of his Formalism in
Ethics, xxxxxxi.
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history of problems. In every ontological problem we consider,

Hartmann insists, we need to eliminate its historically conditioned
elements and focus on its essential aspects. If there are prejudices
incorporated in our thinking, then we have to identify and correct them.
He never hesitates to point out both worthy insights and blinding
mistakes in his philosophical predecessors. That is why we study the
history of ideas and the history of philosophy so carefullywith an
open and sympathetic, yet objectively oriented and critical mind.
Gadamer replies that the core of Hartmanns nave orientation is his
belief in some independently existing history of problems. Insofar as
problems are different from questions, they are always conditioned by the
historical circumstances and the dialectic of question and answer. There
are no such things as independently existing problems, just as there is no
history of problems. This is a pure abstraction, an invention of the mind
unsuccessfully attempting to detach itself from the historical currents that
shape the events of the world and our thinking about them. In Gadamers
words,
It is typical of the embarrassment of philosophical consciousness
when faced with historicism that it took fight into an abstraction, the
concept of the problem, and saw no problem about the manner in
which problems actually exist. Neo-Kantian history of problems
is a bastard of historicism. Critiquing the concept of the problem by
appealing to a logic of question and answer must destroy the illusion
that problems exist like stars in the sky.7
The main thrust of Gadamers TruthandMethodis that there is a different

concept of truth in natural and human sciences; thus the method of
searching for truth must also be correspondingly different. According
to Gadamer, Hartmanns new ways of ontology and his insistence
on perennial philosophical problems resemble the methodological
approach of natural sciences too closely. Hartmann completely ignores
the hermeneutical method of question and answer, the only appropriate
method for philosophical thinking and human sciences.
We can point out a variety of things in Hartmanns defense. Ontological
questions do resemble natural science far more than they resemble, say,
literary criticism of some text, or sociohistorical analysis of some event. If
the question of being as being makes sense at all, it can serve as an
example
Gadamer, TruthandMethod, 377.
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of the perennial problem which has nothing to do with the logic of question
and answer. The case is analogous for the problem of the relationship of
ontological and epistemological categories and, perhaps the greatest
problem of all, the relationship of the mind and real world. Just as there are
questions dealing with the nature of humanity, which remain essentially
the same regardless of the social context in which they are raised, there are
also ontological questions regarding the nature and structure of being.
These ontological questions about the world such as it actually is are
more basic than both the logic of natural sciences and the hermeneutical
logic advocated by the historically oriented and postmodernist
philosophers. Just as science cannot tell us what the fundamental
categories of being are, but, instead, must take them over from
ontology, neither can human sciences determine their own categories
without the help of a timelessly considered ontology. We must therefore
return to ontology because (i) all fundamental metaphysical questions
are ontological in nature, and because (ii) the content of these questions
is not an accidental or arbitrary product of social practice; such
questions are rooted in the eternal puzzlement at the world and its
wonders.8
Gadamers logic of questions and answers has a role to play not where
he sees it, but at a different point of philosophical inquiry. One of the
vices of the intellectualism is that it constantly strives toward rational
closure of any inquiry, a definitive answer to any question. Hartmanns
ontology of the conflicting being and the dialectic of antinomies show how
groundless such expectations are. Even in the field in which we hope for
some definitive results, the field of categorial analysis, our thinking leads
us from one set of problems to further and more complex problems. Our
most systematic and rigorous thinking leads us toward the discovery of
new conflicts, antinomies, and wonders. Wonder is thus not only the
initiator of philosophical thinking and analysis, but also its end product.
Philosophy beings with our wonder at the complexity and beauty of the
world and deepens that wonder and the sense of its appreciation even
further. Despite our intellectualistic dream of the conclusive overcoming
of the opposites in their grand synthesis, the cycle never ends.
In Hartmanns view, the vast majority of post-Hegelian philosophers
(Gadamer included) turn against ontology because of the correlativistic
mistake.9 They place the mind, whether understood in the individual or
See Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, Introduction, section 14, 1315. See

also Hartmann, DerAufbauderrealenWelt, vx.
See Hartmann, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, sections 10, 11, and 13 of the
Introduction, and also ch. 23a, 1445 and ch. 26c, 1612.
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the social way, as it were between the cognizing subject and the world to
be cognized. They then assume that, in order to have cognition, the mind
must correlate between them. The mind becomes the ultimate judge of
what there is, and of what kind of properties and limits that being may
have.
Hartmanns view is that, just because our thinking about something
is a product of consciousness, the object we think about does not thereby
become mind-dependent. The (cor)relation between a subject and an object
does not turn the object into something mental. In analogy to Berkeleys
esse est percipi, we can say that the correlativistic argument postulates
that to be is to be thought about.
We should not confuse the way of thinking and the conditions of
experience on the one hand, with what we are thinking about and the
objects of experience on the other. In this type of fallacy, the fascination
with the intentio obliqua becomes the prison of the inquiring mind. For
Hartmann, the price of being entrapped in our minds is too high: if only
internal (or narrative) coherence matters, we then sacrifice any robust
notion of truth and knowledge. If, by contrast, we turn back to intentio
recta, as ontology must do, this entrapping illusion disappears: being is
what it is, regardless of what anyone thinks and how much one knows
about it.
The way toward rediscovery of the real is hence open. And if in this
process we stumble upon irresolvable antinomies and find out that being
is not as harmonious as we thought, so be it. If reality is more recalcitrant
to our logical constraints than we anticipated, let us loosen-up our logical
principles and find logic that corresponds to the resistance of the real.
Why continue to imitate the proverbial fishermen who are more
preoccupied with their nets than the fish they are supposed to catch in
them? If philosophy is to remain faithful to its original calling, why not
repudiate the correlativistic way of thinking, assisted by untenable
intellectualistic expectations, and return to reality to find out what it
really is?
In ordering ourselves toward the world as it is, we should also not
forget that, in this first part of the book, we have mostly discussed only
one way of being: real being. We have left untouched the whole realm
of values, which belongs to ideal being. Of the various kinds of values,
Hartmann focuses on two: moral and aesthetic. His books discussing
these values are not an afterthought for Hartmann, or a desire to
complete a philosophical system. From the initial outlines of his
ontological program, Hartmann emphasizes the role of moral and
aesthetic values. His book on moral values, Ethics, appeared in 1926,
before any major work on ontology in a narrow sense. Similarly, his
first paper on aesthetics, presented at the
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61
World Congress of Philosophy, also in 1926, unmistakably shows the

outlines of an aesthetics he developed two decades later.10
If Hartmann is right, ethics and aesthetics do not stand opposed to
ontology; rather, they are its extension into the realm of ideal being.
Ethics and aesthetics are based on the same fundamental insight as
ontology of real being: conflicts lie in the nature of being. Thinking
specifically about ethics, Hartmann emphasizes that the range of
application of this insight is immeasurable.11 What is even more
important, the application of this insight leads Hartmann to fascinating
discoveries in the realms of moral and aesthetic values. It also guides
him toward unexpected realizations with regard to what it means to be
a human being and live a meaningful life.
As Will Durant said, philosophy is an attempt to coordinate the real
in the light of the ideal. We are yet to see what it means in the case of
Hartmanns philosophy so heavily focused on beingand values.
10
11
Nicolai Hartmann, ber die Stellung der sthetischen Werte im Reich der Werte
berhaupt, Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy Harvard
University,Cambridge,Massachusetts,1926(New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1927), 42836.
Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie mglich? 312.
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Part II
Values
Morallifeislifeinthemidstof
conflicts.
Hartmann
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II.1
Nature of Values
Hartmanns ontology can be compared to a submarine exploration of the

depths of the ocean. His analysis of values, by contrast, takes a birds eye
view. When he speaks about the starry heavens of values, this is more
than just a metaphor. Values are part of ideal being that seems to float
above daily life and events taking place in it. There are so many values
that look to an unaccustomed eye as if randomly spread over the
heavenly vault. A trained eye will, however, recognize the constellations
of values and some individual stars. Where an ignorant person will see
temporary distraction or useless curiosity, an experienced traveler will use
the stars to navigate through the stormy waters of life.
Arendt argues that what characterizes our age is an extreme degree
of thoughtlessness. Hartmann need not disagree with this estimate.
Nevertheless, he puts the emphasis on modern mans blindness for values.
What astonishes Hartmann is:
the narrowness of the sense of value, petty-mindedness, a lack of
appreciation of the comprehensible extent of the real. For most
persons the limit of lifes narrowest interests, of the most positive
egoistic relations, dictated by the stress of the moment, is at the same
time the limit of their moral universe. Their life is a cramped,
diminished life, a shriveled, distorted caricature of humanity.1
We usually blame our difficulties on bad luck and unfortunate social,

economic, or political circumstances. According to Hartmann,
The tragedy of man is that of one who, sitting at a well-laden table, is
hungry but who will not reach out his hand, because he does not see
what is before him. For the real world is inexhaustible in abundance,
Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 5 [I, 38]. See also Ethik, ch. 41c [II, 210].
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actual life is saturated and overflows with values, and when we lay
hold of it we find it replete with wonder and grandeur.2
We sense right away that in the exploration of values Hartmann comes

closer not only to the primal sense of wonder, which inspires us toward
philosophical thinking, but also to the weighty questions of human
existence. Perhaps we do not need to know much about being as being, or
about the categories characterizing some strata of reality, for lack of that
knowledge would not cripple our humanity. It is different with values.
They seem to connect us right away with the question of meaning: of
existence in general, and of human existence in particular. Yet we must
be careful and double-check our impressions. For just as ontology lies
some distance from the practical affairs of ordinary man, so does the
realm of values. If the starry heavens towering above us hold the key to
the full development of our humanity, we need to understand not only how
values impact us, but also what their nature is.
Nietzsche famously proclaims that the task of a philosopher is to solve
the problem of value and define the rank order of values.3 Values seem
to be so important for us all, philosophers or nonphilosophers, but when
we look back at the history of philosophy it is easy to see that axiology, or
theory of value, is the least developed of all philosophical disciplines. In
fact, even the term value is of relatively recent origin. Ancient and
medieval philosophers do not use it at all. Arendt traces the shift that
occurred in the use of that concept from the early modern philosophers,
particularly Locke, to our present days. Locke still recognizes the
intrinsic natural worth of anything, which is an objective quality of
things themselves, outside the will of the individual purchaser or
seller. From the conception of the intrinsic worth the development of
economy leads toward the usevalue, which is of great significance for
the advancement of utilitarianism and the expansion of modern
capitalism. The subsequent advance of commercial society leads to the
further relativization of value: from the use value to the exchange value
determined by the market.4
The history of Western philosophy, together with the overarching
history of the West, is the history of arguments about values. There is
hardly another topic that is surrounded by so much disagreement and
confusion.
2
3
Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 5 [I, 39].

Quoted from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics,Religion,andEthics, trans.
J. Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 69. See chapters 2, 4, and
7 of the cited work for Gadamers criticism of Hartmanns understanding of values
and, more generally, of Hartmanns rich and brilliant book on ethics (107).
Arendt, TheHumanCondition, 1646.
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From ancient times, the focus has been on finding the highest or ultimate
value of human life standing on the top of the pyramid of other values. A
rough division of the major attempts at grasping such an ultimate value
separates them into hedonistic and anti-hedonistic views. The hedonistic
views differ with regard to whether the ultimate value is pleasure-based, or
something more comprehensive and expressed in terms of contentment.
The anti-hedonistic views range from those regarding knowledge, truth,
beauty, virtue, harmony, love, friendship, justice, or freedom as the
highest good. Nor is there any agreement as to whether there is a strict
pyramid of values, all-arching toward one highest value, or, instead, a
genuine pluralism, something like a network of independent and
irreducible values.
There are also related confusions regarding the function, ontological
status, absoluteness, and objectivity of values. One of the thinkers who
have made great impact on our understanding of these issues in the
twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin, maintains that, values are created by
men in their struggle to master themselves, their society and natural
world. Values, therefore, [are] historical, relative to the cultures that
engendered them and contradictory, since human nature itself is
contradictory.5
Hartmann contests Berlins views on virtually every point. It is
misleading to say that values deal with mastering ourselves, our society,
and the natural world. While this is accepted as one of the usually
undisputed pillars of the Western worldview, the primary function of
values does not concern any form of mastering. Values deal with guidance
and orientation. Like the stars above, they help us find our way through
reality by directing us toward the worthy objects of devotion and
pursuit. Hartmann holds that the proper function of values is
Sinngebungthey give sense and meaning, they recommend what is to
be esteemed and what not. Values are not related to mastery over
ourselves, or of our social and natural world. They are related to our
aspirations. As spiritual beings, we strive toward what is great and
superior. We strive toward them from the bottom of our nature, and this
Hartmann considers to be the most beautiful feature of humanity.
One point of agreement between Hartmann and Berlin is their view
that values cannot be derived from facts about human nature. Berlin does
a masterful job in showing how the philosophers of the Enlightenment
assume that all human beings want the same things and that those things
are not in conflict. On the basis of such rationalistic optimism, they believe
that if people are freed from ignorance and prejudices, as well as old
customs
5
Quoted from Michael Ingatieff, IsaiahBerlin:ALife(New York: Henry Holt, 1998),

2012.
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and superstitions, we could come up with definitive answers to all

questions and just solutions to all problems. Berlin exposes the
naivet of such expectations and swings toward the Romantic emphasis
of cultural variety and historicism. This criticism of the Enlightenment
seduces him to accept the following dilemma: values are either derived
from facts about human nature, or they are products of historically
and culturally conditioned human beings, the products of the objective
spirit of one time and place.
Hartmanns ontology enables him to see a third option: values are
independent of persons. We do not create values, nor do values change as
a result of our insights. Ontologically speaking, Berlin is wrong to believe
that values exist as an aspect of the objective spirit. They exist on their
own in the realm of ideal being, independently on whether we recognize
them and follow their ought to be, their recommendations. How we
realize values and which of them we choose to embrace, if we do at all, is
relative to us, to our individual, cultural, and historical circumstances.
Nevertheless, values themselves are absolute.
Since the ontological status of values is such a controversial issue,
let us compare Hartmanns view with that of Kart Popper. In order to
distinguish the ontological status of values from those of physical objects
(such as chairs and tables, which populate the first world) and subjective
experiences (psychological processes, which reside in the second world),
Popper argues that, together with theories, arguments, problems, and
books, values exist in the third world. Although Popper regards this
realm as essentially the product of the human mind, the objects of the
third world have their own inherent or autonomous laws, which makes
the inmates of this world real: more or less as real as tables and chairs.6
If Hartmann is right, Poppers view of values is also based on an
ontological oversight. Like Berlin, Poppers does not distinguish between
real and ideal being. Popper correctly realizes that the ontological status of
values is different from that of inanimate objects, organic being, and even
the products of consciousness. He does not understand the peculiarities of
the world of spirit, however, together with its distinctions of the personal,
objective, and objectified spirit. In Hartmanns terminology, Popper
locates values in the objectified spirit. Yet values do not reside in any
stratum of real being but in ideal being. They are essences, in Schelers
phenomenological sense of the word. Values are not formal essences,
like the principles and categories of logic, but material essences. Like all
essences, they can be discerned by an a priori insight. We do not learn
6
Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1976), 148.
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what is of value by induction from experience; experience can only deal

with the actualization of a value, however perfect or imperfect, complete
or incomplete that actualization may be. Values themselves are not only
independent of things we experience as valuable, but are their
prerequisites: things are valuable only through a relation to values
themselves.
Hartmanns view of the ideal existence of values resembles Platonic
Ideas, but it is important not to overlook the differences between the two
approaches. Platonic Ideas are supposed to be the categories of existence,
and as such apply to the real world. Insofar as values are also the categories
of existence, in a consistently Platonic world, truly real beings and ideal
values coincide: real overlaps with ideal. Hartmann deviates from this
view for two reasons. On the one hand, ontology is stronger than
axiology. On the other, the Platonic stand diminishes the autonomy of
values, by equating values with existing beings and by detaching values
from mans free choice.
Such confusions regarding the proper realms of ontology and axiology
are not accidental. They stem from our oversight that, as beings, values
stand under the same laws that Hartmann formulates in his ontology. These
laws are:
1. The law of stratification and foundation.

2. The law of height and strength.
3. The law of opposition and complementation.
The first of these laws deals with the stratification of being, which
Hartmann articulates in terms of (i) the recurrence of the categories of the
lower strata in higher layers, (ii) their transformation in the higher strata,
(iii) the novelty that is thereby introduced, and (iv) the distance between
the strata. The strata of values are different than the strata of real being.
In the case of values, the only strata we can talk about are the mutually
irreducible kinds of values. This is the foundation of Hartmanns value
pluralism, according to which there are (i) goods as values, (ii) values of
the pleasant, (iii) vital values, (iv) cognitive values, (v) moral values, and
(vi) aesthetic values.7
While moral values are always the valuesofintention(and as such are
the conditioned values that inhere in the person), vital values, goods as
values, and values of the pleasant are the intendedvalues(and as such are
the conditioning values). The conditioning values can overlap, but we can
See Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 27, 32942; and Ethik, chs 356 [II, 12554].
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still outline their borders. Vital values involve values such as health,
energy level and life enthusiasm. Values of the pleasant and goods as
values are regularly mistakenly grouped together, for example when the
value of what is pleasant is attributed to an object that leads us to
experience pleasure.
Hartmann is not always clear about what he considers under the rubric
of goods as values. They all have in common that they are good for
someone (even if that someone is not aware of it), but then they branch
in diverse directions. In Aesthetics, for example, he speaks about the most
elementary goods, such as air, soil, light, and water. In Ethics, by contrast,
his focus is on two other groups of goods as values. One of them is
attached to the objective state of affairs, thus situational values, and
they include existence, situation, power, happiness, and more specific
goods, such as property, possession, law, education, and literature. The
other kind of goods
as values are attached to a subject, and Hartmann there distinguishes life,
consciousness, activity, suffering, strength, freedom of the will, foresight,
and purposive efficacy.
Like Scheler, Hartmann considers cognitive, moral, and aesthetic
values as spiritualvalues. One way to distinguish among spiritual values
is by looking at the carrier of value. In the case of moral values, it is
always a human being as a person. For cognitive values, the carrier is
not man, neither as a person, nor as a cognizer. Man is neither true nor
false, but his judgment is. Thus, the proper carrier of cognitive values is a
cognitive judgment. In the case of aesthetic values, the carrier again is
not man; it does not matter whether he is beautiful or ugly. The carrier of
an aesthetic value is an individual aesthetic object.
Unlike Scheler, Hartmann does not consider the values of the holy (or
religious values), because they depend on the existence of God, which can
neither be rationally established nor is it phenomenologically given.
The mutual relation of these kinds of values is that of conditioning, not
of founding (as in ontology of real being). In the conditioning relation,
unlike the stratification proper, when the conditioned value is actualized,
the conditioning value is not necessarily actualized with it. With regard to
our love for another person, for instance, the question is not whether the
service rendered to another person with such love is successful or not, that
is, whether the intended situation becomes actual or not. The relevant issue
is only whether it is sincerely undertaken. The conditioned value is always
higher than the value conditioning it.
The second law deals with the height and strength of values.
Philosophers have always searched for one definitive scale of values,
something analogous to the great chain of being in ontology. On
Schelers view, which attempts to account both for an ideal of one unified
scale and
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the apparent disagreements concerning what that scale is, the hierarchy
of values is itself absolutely invariable, while the order of preference in
history is itself variable.8
One of Hartmanns greatest contributions to our understanding of
values is to show that there cannot be such a scale. There are many scales
of values of which the two are the most important: the strength and the
height of values. They work in an inverse ratio: the lowest values are the
strongest, and the highest values are the weakest. In Hartmanns view,
the stronger a value, the more blameworthy is its absence but the less
praiseworthy is its presence. By contrast, the higher a value, the more
commendable is its attainment and the less culpable is its absence: A
threat to life and limb is the gravest threat; but mere life is not on that
account the highest good.9 More generally, Evidence of strength is
found in the seriousness of the offence against a value, while height is
known by the meritoriousness of fulfillment.10
The third law concerns the opposition and complementary relationships
of various values. In Ethics, Hartmann analyzes over 40 different values.
For every positive value, there is an opposing negative value (as well as the
neutral point, or the point of indifference). The basic situation in any value
conflict is not that between one positive value and its counterpart negative
value, but that between one positive value and another positive value (or
one negative value against another negative value). Such conflicts abound;
we constantly and unavoidably find ourselves in the middle of them. What
is more, no guiltless resolution of such conflicts is possible: one of the
conflicting values must be violated.
The incompatibilities of values arise because some opposing values
cannot be fully realized in the same life situations. One example of such an
opposition is between brotherly love (as championed by Tolstoy, for
example) and love of the remote (as advocated by Nietzsche). One value
urges the development of brotherhood and Christian compassion toward
those near us, while the other directs us to devote an even greater
attention to those who are remote, not just in space but even in time (as
our responsibility toward the future generations).
Another, even more serious type of conflict emerges because values
themselves are antithetical; for instance, brotherly love and justice. The
sharpest of such conflicts present the antinomies of values. As is the
9
10
Max Scheler, FormalisminEthicsandNonFormalEthicsofValues, trans. M. S.

Frings and R. L. Funk (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 106.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 43e [II, 453].
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 43d [II, 451].
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case in ontology, in axiology there are also genuine value antinomies

and they are rationally insolvable. Systematic as he is in everything,
Hartmann distinguishes such antinomies with regard to their (i) modality
and (ii) relation, as well as (iii) the quantity, and (iv) the quality of values.
More specifically, he analyzes the antinomical conflicts between freedom
and necessity (ought), attainment and attainability, the intended value
and the value of intention, the communal and the individual, equality and
inequality, the breath versus the height of development, activity and inertia,
simplicity and complexity, harmony and conflict, and so on.
While Berlin laments that the existence of the antinomies of values
makes human life tragic,11 Hartmann realizes that the presence of
antinomical tensions in the realm of values is by itself something valuable.
Such tensions and conflicts keep our discernment and the feeling of
value alive. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, who battle against our ignorance
and misconceptions, Hartmann is more concerned about the narrowness
of our value-horizon. We sleepwalk through life, oblivious to its
complexity, depth, and richness. The antinomies of values awaken our
value-feeling and value-intuition, and convey to us a new sense of
wonder, amazement, and reverence for the world laden with values.
The third law concerns not only the opposition, but also the
complementary relationship of various forms of being. In the realm
of real being, this is of crucial importance because the unity of real
beings is regularly the unity of heterogeneous elements. This relation
of complementarity is no less important in the realm of values. Some
values, like trust and trustworthiness, faith and fidelity, kindness and
gratitude, naturally go together. The more interesting cases are those of
complementarity of different kinds of values. Material goods, for example,
are complementary with the persons capacity to enjoy such goods (health,
consciousness, sense of appreciation). The lower goods, such as material
goods, find their fulfillment only in higher values: material wealth is not
of much value when a person is sick, or incapable of appreciating luxuries
of life.
The most interesting cases of the synthesis of values are those where
two values stand clearly opposed to each other. Justice and brotherly love
stand in such contrast, as do pride and humility, egoism and altruism, and
many others. Our longing for this synthesis is due to two factors. First, no
value can be actualized on its own, but always in clusters with other
values. Artificially isolated values and one-sided values, even those that
are the
11
Isaiah Berlin, TheProperStudyofMankind:AnAnthologyofEssays, ed. H. Hardy and

R. Hausher (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997), 239.
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highest, are dangerous: so isolated and overemphasized, they tend to lead

toward extremes and fanaticism. Second, our longing for such a synthesis
is due to the fact that in all actual cases of conflict our conduct cannot fail
to reach a certain unity. The synthesis thus concerns not the relation
among antagonistic values themselves, but their actualization.
Hartmann calls this idea a necessary postulate of ethics and elaborates
it in the following way:
Only a sense of justice which is at the same time loving, only a
brotherly love which also considers the far distant, only a pride which
would likewise be humble, could be valid as an ideal for moral
conduct. But insofar as the antithetic of values, with its gradations,
permeates the whole realm, it follows that in general no isolated
values exist for themselves, that rather does every value reach true
fulfillment only in its synthesis with othersand indeed finally only
in idea, only in its synthesis with all.12
In Kants terminology, the synthesis of all values, including those that

are antithetical, is not a constitutive but a regulative principle of axiology.
What has yet to be seen is what is gained if such a synthesis is possible,
and what is lost if it is not.
12
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 41g [II, 425].
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I I. 2
Moral Values in General
Why does Hartmann entitle his book Ethics rather than A Theory of
Value?
Hartmann is aware of Kants three fundamental questions of
philosophy: (i) What can we know? (ii) What ought we to do? and
(iii) What may we hope? He recognizes that the second question
suggests that ethics aims at more than a merely cognitive grasp of reality,
and yet at less than what hope yearns for. This fundamental question
shows why ethics is primarily a practical rather than a theoretical
enterprise and also locates ethics between the hard realities of life and
the hovering ideals of the visionary.1
Taken by itself, the question What ought we to do? does not show
the full range of the ethical realm. It only focuses this realm into one
culminating and most visible point, that of practical interest. Underlying
the question dealing with the necessity and actuality of action, however, is
one broader and deeper requirement: in order to be moral beings, we need
to participate in the fullness of life, to be open and receptive to everything
that has meaning and value. Ethics cannot tell us what to do in every
practical situation, nor can it reduce us to mere mechanical executioners
of the moral law. Put differently, taken by itself, ethics cannot answer the
question that it sets as its primary concern. The ethics of conduct must
be part of a broader set of issues dealing with the nature of humanity and
the continuous development of every personality. The question What
ought we to do? always presupposes the concerns about who we are and
what we are trying to become. Our understanding of what is valuable in
life precedes and conditions the question of what specific action to
undertake. Put more broadly, just as ontology precedes and conditions
axiology, axiology precedes and conditions ethics.
Hartmann develops this insight not just in terms of the gap between to
be and ought to be, but also in terms of the distinction between ought
1
Both quotes are from Hartmann, Ethik,Introduction, sec. 1 [I, 27].
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to be and ought to do. Unlike ontological categories, values cannot

determine existent beings. They can only determine what they ideally
ought to be. What ought to be has its ideal value regardless of whether
anything in the real world has been or will be in accord with it.
Nevertheless, the ought signifies a direction toward something. For
example, universal peace among nations is in itself something valuable;
it is something that gives direction to our strivings, attitudes, and
behaviors. This does not imply, however, that a single individual, or a
single nation, ought to bring peace. The ought to be is different from the
ought to do. In Hartmanns words, I ought to do what ought to be,
insofar as it is not, and insofar as to make it actual is in my power. This
double insofar separates these two kinds of ought.2
Hartmann bridges the fracture between the two kinds of ought by
introducing yet another ought: the positive ought to be. The real is
indifferent toward the ideal, but not the other way around. The ideal has a
tendency to transcend its own sphere, irrespective of the possibility of its
realization. The positive ought to be occurs where the ideal finds itself in
opposition to reality, where the self-existent values are unreal.3
The positive ought to be brings the realms of the ontological,
axiological, and ethical together, and their meeting point is a conscious
subject. Such a subject can feel the resistance of reality and also what is
missing from that reality. Consciousness leads us to realize not only what
is, but also what is not and what could be. The positive ought to be is the
crossroad point between the awareness of what the situation is and what it
allows to happen, and of what it ideally could and should become. The
positive ought to be does not lie within the ideal realm. It issues thence,
but extends itself into the real; and insofar as it is a determining factor
there, its activity is a real creating, a bringing forth.4 As a subject, a
human being has a peculiar position in the cosmos. He stands midway
between good and evil, being wholly neither, participating in both. The
Platonic image of Eros in its relation to the eternal Ideas is the image of
man in his relation to the ethical valuesto the mode of Being of the
moral essence, as it exists in the real world.5
In Part III, we shall return to the interrelationship of these different
spheres. Let us now focus on the nature of moral values. According to
Hartmann, such values do not and cannot stand alone. In every type of
moral action, besides strictly moral values, that is, the values that
characterize
2
3
4
5
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 18a [I, 248].

Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 18b [I, 249].
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 19a [I, 255].
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 18c [I, 2512].
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persons as free agents, the values that characterize things and situations are
also involved. In order to be truthful, for example, a person must be alive.
That, however, does make life a moral value, while truthfulness clearly is
one. Life is agood but not thegood. The value of life is not moral but it is
morally relevant.
Hartmann further distinguishes between moral values and another
subset of goods as values, which he calls situational values and which
deal with the goals of our actions. Like all other goods as values,
situational values are morally relevant but not moral values themselves.
Our actions always aim at something, at the realization of certain values
in the situations in which we find ourselves. This does not make our aims,
goals, or ends the carriers of morality, as is so frequently assumed.
Valuable things can come into existence without any intention being
directed toward them, yet it is precisely this intention that makes a
certain value moral. Moral values are the values of intention, not intended
values. As Hartmann formulates it,
Moral qualities characterize a persons conduct, but not the object of
the intention in which his conduct subsists. According to Schelers
phrase, [moral values] appear on the back of the deed, but not in
the goal it aims at. The ethics of ends involves a fundamental
misunderstanding of moral values, in its false identification of these
with the value of the situation striven for.6
It is an equally wrong to identify moral values with means. Our actions

frequently aim at something we consider useful for others or ourselves.
This, however, does not make usefulness a self-sufficient (or autonomous)
value, a moral value on its own account. By its nature, usefulness can only
be a value of means to something deemed to be valuable in itself. Moral
values are not relative to any for. Honesty of a person A can be of value
for person B. Yet the moral value of honesty of person A does not in any
way depend on whether B (or anyone else) recognizes or appreciates the
honesty of A.
The distinction of means and ends is far less important for ethics than
commonly assumed among ethicists. The discrepancy between is and
ought is another example of a distinction not as central as generally
regarded. With his understanding of values as ideal beings, Hartmann
does not have to deal with the question of how an ought can (if at all) be
derived from an is; this is a misguided question because no ought has
6
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 27a [II, 31]. For Hartmanns criticism of teleological ethics, see
his TeleologischesDenken(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950).
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to be derived from any is. They are ontologically distinct. The project of
morality is to find a way to apply the ought existing in the realm of ideal
being to a concrete life situation. That is, the project is to actualize moral
values. The real issue in ethics is not how to derive an ought from an
is but which of the values to apply to the specific situation. What diverts
our will from the ought is the ought itself, for values are so many.
In clearing the ground toward our proper understanding of moral
values, Hartmann does not spare the widespread belief that happiness is
the highest moral value and the ultimate end of life. He considers
happiness not to be a moral value at all, much less the highest moral
value. Happiness is one of the values of the good. Together with
pleasure, with which it is frequently mistakenly identified, happiness is
a cloak for other, higher values, moral values included.
Following Aristotle, Hartmann distinguishes between the objective
and the subjective preconditions of happiness. Objectively, happiness
depends on favorable external circumstances, on lucky coincidences, or
good destiny. Taken in this sense, happiness is what is wanted, a situational
value. Considered in the subjective sense, happiness is closer to moral
values because it deals with a persons capacity for the appreciation of life.
It then relates to the persons ability to feel pleasure, satisfaction, joy, or
blessedness. These two sides of happiness can be fully independent of each
other and one can exist without the other.
Hartmanns discussion of happiness becomes more original when he
warns us of the dangers associated with happiness. One of them is that
we attempt to pursue happiness as a direct goal, while happiness, in fact,
cannot be attained in such a manner. Happiness only comes from where
one does not expect it; it occurs when we are not looking for it.
Hartmanns observation of the second danger associated with happiness
is even more interesting. People spoiled by happiness become shallow
and narrow-minded for other higher values. He writes, A man can bear
only a limited measure of happiness without sinking morally; even in
happiness there lurks a hidden disvalue. Indeed, in no other value is
this limiting phenomenon so paradoxical as in happiness.7
It is fascinating that Hartmann contrasts the value of happiness with
the value of suffering. All hedonistic forms of ethics identify suffering
with pain and consider it as an exemplar of evil. The ancient Greeks
attached no special value to suffering. Only Christianity takes a different
attitude toward it, and distinctly recognizes the elevating and liberating
effects of suffering. Instead of associating it with evil and considering it a
7
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 37e [II, 161].
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weakness, Christianity bestows a special dignity on suffering and treats it

as a mysterious power.
Christianity tends to overlook that suffering is primarily a negative
value, but Hartmann reminds us that suffering, as such, is undesirable.
He also recognizes the indisputable value of suffering when contrasted
to the incapacity to suffer. Such incapacity can lead to numbness and
dehumanization, as beautifully portrayed in Aldous Huxleys Brave
New World. Hartmann understands this incapacity in terms of the
impossibility to bear grief and misfortune, which leads people to collapse
under the weight of suffering: When a dire misfortune has passed away,
it leaves the man who is incapable of suffering broken, morally warped,
disfigured, weakened; he can no longer stand up, he has been damaged in
his fundamental worth.8
Those who have the capacity for suffering can be strengthened by it.
Their power of endurance, their moral being and their humanity grow
through such suffering: Suffering is the energy-test of a moral being, the
load-test of his elasticity.9 The capacity to suffer sharpens our moral
feeling and intuition. It enables us to recognize the values that were
previously hidden from us. Suffering is the educator of values.
There is nothing pathological or absurd in the willingness to suffer
for a higher goal. Such a goal may be individual or social, but the will
to suffer for loves sake, or rather for a person who is loved, is even
deeper. In a loving suffering for another person there is an unmistakable
participation in something larger than ones own personality. This
suffering creates a community with another person, which is of great
value for our moral life.
The deepened capacity for suffering leads indirectly to the enhancement
of our capacity for happiness. Although we take suffering to be the
opposite of happiness, suffering actually deepens our appreciation of
happiness. The quiet, firm nature of the tried soul does not crave for
pleasure and happiness. He does not care for it. And just for that reason
according to the law of happinessit comes to him.10
Many of our confusions about ethics stem from the fact that we
neither clearly understand which values we can meaningfully strive
toward, nor which moral values can be actualized through striving. Even
more fundamental is that these confusions are due to our insufficient
understanding of what distinguishes moral values in the strict sense from
8
9
10
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 36d [II, 139].

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those values that are indispensible for the actualization of moral values
but which themselves are not moral. Let us then follow Hartmanns own
summary of the nature of moral values, based primarily on Chapter 27 of
his Aesthetics.
1. There is no atomism of values. Although we can consider them

individually, all values are essentially connected with other values
and form clusters of values. Moral values are no exception to this
rule.
2. The carriers of moral values are not material goods but exclusively
3.
persons, or acts, attitudes, behavior, and intentions of persons. (This is

why moral values are spiritual values). Only that behavior which is not
forced but free and could have been different can have moral value.
Moral values are not relative toward any for, as goods as values
are. Goods as values are good for those to whom they belong, or
whom they serve (when we think of values such as air, soil, light,
water). Moral values (such as honesty, brotherly love, and justice)
are good independently of whether anyone recognizes or appreciates
them.
4. Moral values are tied to living beings not only as the carriers of such
5.
values but also as their objects. Moral values and moral behavior deal
directly or indirectly not only with other spiritual beings, but also with
all living beings.
In every moral action, two kinds of values are always present: the
value of intention (or moral values) and the intended value (goods as
values, situational values).
6. The actualization of moral values is founded on goods as
7.
values. Nevertheless, moral values are autonomous. They do

not have to contain their conditioning values (goods as values)
as their
elements, just as in the case of the ontological strata of real being; the
conditioning (thus lower) value is not repeated in the conditioned (thus
higher) value.
Autonomous values cannot be derived from or reduced to anything
else. If they exist, they are absolute values.
8. We have no other criterion for whether a certain value is autonomous

but our feeling of value. Although such feeling of value is differently
developed in various individuals and cultures, which is why it appears
that there are many morals, when autonomous values exist, they are
always absolute.
We are now in a better position to answer our initial question dealing
with the title of Hartmanns work. His book presents an incredible array
of values, which are subtly discriminated and exhaustively contrasted.
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This is so because Hartmann understands the central project of ethics

as a systematic analysis of the objective contents of moral claims and
commandments. Such analysis must also involve the mutual relationships
of values underlying these claims and commandments. At the most
obvious level, Hartmann attempts to connect the already undertaken
projects by Kant and Nietzsche. In the apriority of the moral law,
Hartmann recognizes a well-considered and unified knowledge of the
absoluteness of genuine ethical standards and values. Kant lacks the
concrete perception and the breadth of sympathy that would have given
this knowledge full recognition. This missing link is supplied by
Nietzsche (and later Scheler), who recognizes that we have never fully
grasped what good and evil are, and who redirects our attention to the
fascinating richness of the moral world. In combining Kant and
Nietzsche, Hartmann remains truthful to his central philosophical
intention to fuse organically what appear to be heterogeneous and
conflicting factors. He remains equally faithful to his fundamental
conviction that the purpose of philosophical analysis is the Socratic
midwifery of our consciousness, which for Hartmann signifies a new
kind of love for the task in hand, a new devotion, a new reverence for
what is great.11
Just as we need a new way of ontology, so we analogously need a new
way of ethics. The dependence of the question: What ought we to do?
on the question: What ought we to value? shows that this new ethics
presupposes an axiology. In new ethics, as in new ontology, the most
important accomplishment is not the results and the definitive solutions
of all the problems we may face. The essence of the new ethical approach,
of the attempt to combine rationality and sensitivity, is a renewed sense of
wonder. Hartmann expresses it movingly when he says:
The new ethics also has once more the courage to face the whole
metaphysical difficulty of the problems which arise out of the
consciousness of the eternally marvelous and unmastered. Once again
the primal passion of philosophy has become its attitudethe Socratic
pathos of wonder.12
Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 8 [I, 46]. For further discussion, see Eugene
Kellys valuable book, MaterialEthicsofValue:MaxSchelerandNicolaiHartmann
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), chs. 12.
12
11
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I I. 3
Four Fundamental Moral Values
Moral values are values of persons. Hartmann never attempts a moral

typology of persons in the style of Scheler, but he certainly has his
friends view in mind when he writes about the four most
fundamental moral values. Scheler differentiates between saints,
heroes, geniuses, leading spirits of civilization, and artists of
enjoyment. The first prototype he relates to values of the holy, the
second to spiritual values, the third to vital values, the forth to utility,
and the last to pleasure.1
Hartmann has a different grouping in mind. He focuses on the
good, the noble, the pure, and the rich in experience. Each of them may
dominate a person, but Hartmann prefers to consider them as a cluster.
All four of them are values of great height but of low strength. Despite
forming a separate constellation in the realm of moral values, they are
actually antithetical to each other. A synthetic ideal of perfection that
would include a balanced relation of all four has not been found.
The good, together with its counterpart (evil), is the central moral value.
Hartmann does not consider it to be either the most elementary or the
highest value. The good is not the most elementary moral value, to which
other moral values could be reduced, or from which they could be derived.
Against someone like G. I. Moore, whose views were enormously
influential in the English-speaking world, Hartmann emphasizes the
irreducible plurality of value phenomena, together with the view that the
essence of the good is not simple. Following Nietzsche, he claims that
we have only a fragmented knowledge of good and evil. Like all other
values, the good is not definable. Yet we can discern it by means of our
moral intuition and feeling, and this can be done when we consider it in
contrast with other related values.
See Max Scheler, Person and SelfValue, trans. M. S. Frings (Dordrecht: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 12798.
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Both good and evil depend on the intended direction of our volition.
The good is an orientation toward highest values; it is the ability to discern
the higher value in a conflict of two positive values and then realize it in
the real world.
Hartmann does not believe in the good for the sake of good. That is
why the good is never the highest value, and also why it is never the
intended value (despite our common language that suggests otherwise).
The value of good is the value of intention. This point can be clarified by
contrasting good with evil. Hartmann defends a version of the Socratic
view that we never choose evil, that we are not satanic beings. It is
impossible for us to choose what we do not consider, in some sense,
valuable. Because of the nature of human volition, our choice is never
directed toward anything contrary to value as such. No one does evil for
evils sake. Our cravings are always toward the positive, toward the
valuable. A thief desires to possess some material goods. For him they
are valuable, otherwise he would not steal. This, of course, does not make
his action good, for in pursuit of some good as value he violates a still
higher value, the moral value. There are, however, more complicated
cases of evil:
In the case of elementary badness, like brutality, unscrupulous greed
and dishonesty, where it is evident that even in the absence of feeling
toward the disvalue (hence also toward the value) there is a moral
inferiority. In the life of the soul there exists factors which obscure
value, and the person himself is by no means guiltless in regard to
such factors.2
Hartmann does not want to explain away such complex cases of evil:
either by means of the Socratic belief that virtue is knowledge and vice
is ignorance, or the Christian view of the weakness of the will, or the
Augustinian conception of evil as the privation of good, or Arendts
insight into the banality of evil. There is almost always more than one
factor involved, but, in the end, we need to agree with Aristotle that
ultimately each person is to blame for not discriminating properly
between competing values.
As Hartmann considers it, the good does not fit into Schelers moral
topology. Hartmanns view of the noble is closer to this topology,
especially to Schelers conception of a hero, which in Western civilization
is regularly symbolized in the form of a noble warrior. Nobility is a
knightly virtue. It
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 84 [III, 256].
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consists in the pursuit of one value at the exclusion of all others. The noble
is an inner disposition directed toward the highest, toward the exceptional
ideal, in the search for which a person becomes detached from everything
trivial or secondary.
Nobility of the character is the pursuit of a value that is not common to
all. It is an aristocracy of disposition: the magnanimity, generosity, largeheartedness, high-mindedness. Nobility presupposes goodness, but it
aims at what it perceives as best, and not simply as good. A noble
character displays revolutionary tendencies; he is never willing to
compromise the chosen value; he is never satisfied with half-measures.
Such a character experiences the joy of devotion toward what is above
him and looks away from, often even openly despises what is below
him. He looks at all that is narrow and pitiful as his enemy. The
noble is the forward-looking attitude.
The last two of Hartmanns four fundamental values, purity and
richness of experience, are utterly fascinating. They only partially
correspond to Schelers valuesoftheholy andthepleasurable. Purity means
beingunstained by evil: he is pure whom no desire leads astray, whom no
temptation allures. Not surprisingly, as the exemplars of purity Hartmann
lists Jesus, and also two of Dostoevskys characters who are both the
fools for Christ: Prince Myshkin from TheIdiotand Alyosha from The
BrothersKaramazov. In all three cases there is a lack of moral experience:
innocence is considered the highest good, sin the greatest evil. Besides
sin, the opposites of purity are pollution and defilement.
Purity of heart is the primal Christian virtue. In the religious context
purity is considered the whole meaning of moral virtue, but this view is
one-sided and too extreme. Without a doubt, there is much that is good
about purity: it is always connected with sincerity, frankness, openness,
and truthfulness. A pure person never wears a mask, never tells a lie. He
does not judge anyone, nor does he condemn any sin. He believes in
goodness in every man, he is optimistic in a childlike way. Perfect purity
borders on saintliness.
Purity cannot be identified with goodness, either quantitatively or
qualitatively. While the meaning of goodness is entirely positive, that of
purity, as the meaning of its word implies, is negative. Not only is the pure
person unstained by evil and ignorant of it, such a person does not pursue
any ends, he knows nothing of a wondering and struggling consciousness
of the impure mind. He who is pure does not judge or condemn others, but
he also does not actualize any value, any goal. Innocence does not resist
evil, because it does not see it. Or, if seeing evil, it does not understand it
and believes in some hidden goodness behind it.
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Hartmann has high esteem for the value of the pure. Purity is extremely
rare; it is given, not acquired. This is why it virtually always appears as a
gift of grace. Perhaps more than any other moral value, purity should be
connected not with action but with disposition. The power of the pure
is not in his deeds but in his mere existence. This power should never be
underestimated:
[D]espite its originally negative character, [purity] shows itself to be
eminently positive and creative energy in life. Nothing perhaps works so
powerfully, so convincingly, for good, and so transforms others in their
innermost character, as the mere presence of a pure-minded person
who pursues the right undisturbed, just as he sees and understands it
in his simplicity. Precisely in his obliviousness to evil, in his failure to
understand it and to react to it, he becomes a symbol and attracts the
fallen and the morally prostrate.3
Evil shuns the light by its nature. The guilty ones are powerless against
purity. They never feel their weakness and sin more acutely then when
they encounter the pure: At the sight of Jesus, by his mere word, shrewd
calculation and subtlety are silenced.4
Purity is one of those moral values that cannot be striven for. It is either
fulfilled in a person, or it is forever unattainable. This may be why, by one
of those strange twists of the human psyche, we crave it so much. The
higher we estimate the value of purity, the stronger our metaphysical
need for the restoration of the lost innocence becomes. In ethics,
innocence lost cannot be restored. As Hartmann correctly points out,
this is not the last word. Religion attempts to do what is ethically
impossible:
The ancient concept of purification () [and the
Christian] wiping away of guilt is joined with the thought of
forgiveness and salvation through the suffering and sacrifice of the
divinity intervening for man. Purity returns as a gift of grace. The
condition which man must fulfill is simply belief. The mystery of the
new birth resolves the antinomy of the values.5
The mystery of the new birth, the ability to begin anew, as if the slate
is wiped clean, may temporarily resolve the antinomy of values. Not for
3
4
5
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 42c [II, 214].

Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 42g [II, 221].
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87
long. For from the purity of life, from the complete innocence, we quickly
shift toward the richness of life and its complexity, which draws us back
into the conflicts of values. The irresolvable conflicts of values stain us
again.
If purity were the sole content of goodness, the outlook for our
humanity would be extremely pessimistic: such purity cannot be
humanly preserved. This is why its exemplars are a son of God and two
fictional characters. This is why Alyosha Karamazov is not the main hero
of Dostoevskys most powerful novel. If this novel has a hero, it is his
oldest brother, Dmitry. He exemplifies what Hartmann calls richness
of experience.
Richness of experience stands opposed to all three other fundamental
moral values. It is a pursuit of all values, of the fullness of life. The person
dominated by this value shines with optimism that the greatest unity of
the greatest diversity is attainable. This person finds enough room in his
soul for genuine and tragic conflicts, which dominate our lives. Richness
of experience is the value of many-sidedness, including much that is not
good, or noble, or pure. Hartmann holds richness of experience in
especially high esteem, for he finds it necessary for moral maturation:
There is certainly no other way to ethical maturity and expansion than
through the conflicts of life itself, through moral experienceeven
experience of wrong-doing, and this perhaps most of all.6
It is of indispensible value to struggle, and even to fail. There is no
other moral value that so adequately reflects the essential
incompleteness of man, his unquenchable thirst for the higher and the
highest, as well as the curiosity toward the most diverse, including that
which is of dubious moral value. One of the most important of
Hartmanns philosophical insights is that there may be no higher value
than the living of our life to the fullest, the spending of life.
Ethical actuality is richer than all human phantasy, than dream
and fiction. To live apathetically from moment to moment amid
the abundance, is nothing short of sin. The narrowness of a mans
participating sense of value makes him poor. It is because of his
prejudice, his blindness, that he does not see the abundance, in the
midst of which he stands. The ethos of openness to all values is the
tendency to do inward justice to life, to win from it its greatness. Its
passion springs from reverence for the unbounded abundance of the
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 41c [II, 209]. See Ethik, ch. 50b [II, 285].
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things that are of worth, it is knowledge filled with gratitude; and, where
knowledge fails, it is the presentiment that the values of existence are
inexhaustible. Whoever lives in this attitude, by him every restriction
of experience is recognized as superficiality, dullness, barrenness, a
waste of life . . . a moral ingratitude.7
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I I. 4
Four Forms of Love
Hartmann isolates four fundamental moral values and presents them in

a systematic order. They are the backbone of his moral philosophy, the
foundation on which to build the comprehension of other moral values.
These four values are not the highest. Hartmann hints that the value of love
elevates above all other moral values. Presented at different places in
Ethics are four forms of love: brotherly love, love of the remote, radiant
virtue, and personal love. Hartmann does not compare them with the four
fundamental moral values, but a correlation does exist. Brotherly love is
most closely associated with the good, love of the remote with the noble,
radiant virtue with the pure and personal love with the richness of
experience. We should be careful not to read too much into this
correlation. Nevertheless, some important insights into Hartmanns
thinking and the ranking of values can be drawn from it.
In any of its forms, Hartmann understands love in terms of personal
dispositions, as a disposition of affirmation. Many of his remarks about
love remind us of Kants concept of good will, as the only thing in the
world that is unconditionally good. Not only does love belong to the
highest level of values, it also leads to the development of personality and
contributes to the meaning of life.
The term brotherly love is our rendering of the Greek word
. Christianity promotes this form of love (in contrast to the
ancient and ), which is a form of spontaneous love, directed
toward those who stand to us the nearest. Without discriminating who they
are, we intuitively recognize when they need our compassion and help.
This Christian value does not refer primarily to the emotional side, but
rather to ones disposition and intention, followed by ones conduct.
Brotherly love is a loving sense of another persons worth.
In modern times, we think of brotherly love in contrast to justice.
Justice is one of the lowest and most elementary values. Both justice
and brotherly love deal with humanity at a general level. Brotherly love
concerns another person regardless of his rights or worthiness, while
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justice puts all human beings on the same level. Yet there is a significant
difference between them: justice may be unloving, brotherly love
quite unjust.1 While justice is directed outward, while it unites merely
the surface of one person with the surface of another, brotherly love is
directed inward. Brotherly love has its deep roots in the spirit and, like
the good, has a potential to become the unifying principle of all values.
Nevertheless, brotherly love does not involve a fusion of two persons, but
only a participation of one person in the life of another. Brotherly love is
solidarity with another person, a fundamentally positive devotion to the
general humanity of another.
In the case of brotherly love we overcome one form of egoism; when
dealing with love of the remote, the egoism is of a different kind. In one
case we are dealing with egoism in contrast to altruism, in another with
egoism of those who live here and now in contrast to the interest of those
who are remote, not only in space but also in time. While brotherly love
is an everyday virtue, love of the remote is an exceptional one. Following
Nietzsche, Hartmann treats love of the remote as higher than that of
brotherly love, insofar as it consists in striving toward the humanely ideal.
This is the foundation of progress, which must discriminate between good
and bad, mediocre and excellent, what is and what ought to be. Human
beings are ethically unequal, and they ought to be unequal. The more
unequal they are, the more movement there is in the process of
development and the higher are the ends at which they aim.
Hartmann regards love of the remotebetter yet: of the remotest
(Fernstenliebe)as love of the best, as love of the worthiest and the
noblest. It is the love of the creative spirit in humanity, the Platonic
striving toward Beauty in itself, as it is portrayed by Socrates in
Symposium. It is not accidental that this value is most of all promoted by
poets. Not just Homer and Plato, but everywhere, in every culture and
every epoch, poets are the greatest of the creative spirits, since they set in
front of humanity the ideals visualized in a palpable form. Regardless of
individual nuances in setting such ideals, striving is always directed in the
same way:
Greatness of moral spirit, intensity of spiritual energy, which is
required in the taking upon oneself of what is inherently uncertain.
The venture is great. Only a deep and mighty faith, permeating a
persons whole being, is equal to it . . . It is a faith on the grand
scale, faith in a higher order, which determines the cosmic meaning
of man.2
1
2

Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 55e [II, 330]. See also Ethik,ch. 52e [II, 2967].
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While a poet sets an ideal as something remote, a perfection to be

forever approximated even if it can never be reached, the radiant virtue
shows an ideal in one exemplary individual, right here and now. Following
Nietzsches lead again, Hartmann speaks about Schenkende Tugend,
which we translate as radiant virtue, but which primarily refers to a
virtue of bestowing gifts. Not an abstract ideal, like Beauty in itself, but a
concrete individual, like the personality of Socrates, shines like gold and
radiates virtue around himself. He is living proof that an ideal is
possible in our imperfect world.
Unlike our exchange economy, in which one who gives away becomes
poorer, in the gift economy the person who bestows the gift stands himself
as a recipient of gifts. Radiance comes from the life of spiritual fullness,
from the overflowing of it in an actual person. In the case of brotherly
love, the dispensing of love occurs because of the recognized need of the
others. Radiant virtue consists in bestowing from the pressure of the
fullness of life within. It is directed toward all who are capable of
appreciating its worth.
Hence it comes about that to the imparter of spiritual goods it is not the
just, the truthful, the loving, or the faithful man who is the worthiest,
but he who receives it with an open heart, the unspoilt spirit which is
still capable of unlearning everything. That is why the man of radiant
virtue loves those who are ethically imperfect, unripe, unspent and still
flexible, with the love peculiar to one who has mellowed, is blessed and
is filled with gratitude. He is the eternal of youth.3
The eternal lover of youth is the truest teacher of values. He is the

person who, through the spiritual fullness that he radiates, opens the
hearts, and sharpens the eyes of others for the richness of life. Those
who are ethically imperfect, unripe, unspent and still f lexible walk
away from the person of radiant virtue without really understanding
what they have received. They certainly do not obtain any utilitarian,
serviceable value. They gain something that corresponds to their
spiritual needs, a useless value pointing toward the meaning of life.
One of the central claims of Hartmanns entire philosophical opus is
that it is precisely useless values that bestow meaning upon life. By
uselessness he means neither fruitlessness nor meaninglessness.
Uselessness only refers
3
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 56c [II, 338]. For further discussion of radiant value
albeit without reference to Hartmann, Nietzsche, or Socratessee Lewis Hydes
extraordinary book, TheGift(New York: Random House, 2007).
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to the absence of any tangible purpose or visible end. It is useless values

that we rely on when we attempt to justify our claim upon life. It is on such
values that we depend when we attempt to bestow meaning on our
strivings and struggles.
In his ontology, Hartmann claims that not all of reality, perhaps only
a small part, is meaningful. His ethical view regarding the role of radiant
virtue in bestowing meaning is consistent with his ontology.
It does not matter that radiant virtue is uncommon and is a moral
power found in the few only . . . . Values are not diminished through the
narrowness of the area in which they are actualized. A single individual
can be the giver of meaning for a whole world, insofar as it participates
in him. A life in which only one such exists becomes full of significance
for everybody. This does not at all imply individualism. The import
here does not depend upon the individual value of the one. Nothing
rests with him merely as this person here. It is only the vindication
of all and the giving of meaning for all, which wins through him. The
virtue of the exceptional man inheres precisely in the fact that he is
uncommon, yet again in a higher sense is all-common. As it is an
overflowing of the fullness of life upon all who are reaching in any
way toward its value, so too it is, morally, a shining-forth upon all who
have any degree of sensibility for the meaning and its vindication. Thus
finally, its unplanned work is a solidarity of a unique and novel kind, a
solidarity not of aims or of guilt or of responsibility, but of participation
and fulfillment.4
Just as radiant virtue can bestow the meaning upon life, so can personal
love. Hartmann seems to find personal love more elevating since he claims
that it gives ultimate meaning to life. While radiant virtue spreads its gifts
around indiscriminately, to all who are open-minded and open-hearted to
appreciate them, personal love directs itself to one unique individual. In
describing the virtue of personal love, Hartmann becomes poetic: And the
mystery of love is that it satisfies this deepest and least understood craving.
One who loves gives this unique gift to the person he loves. He gives a new
dimension to the being of the loved one, enabling him to be for himself
what otherwise he is only in himself .5
Brotherly love is related to the humanity in general of those who are
near us; we love them for who they are, not for what they can become.
4
5

Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58a [II, 369].
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In love of the remote, our sight is raised toward the ideal of humanity in
general, toward the most noble and the best that humanity can become.
In radiant virtue, we return to the individual, to the person who
radiates goodness and spirituality around himself. In personal love,
affirmative devotion is directed from one individual toward another.
More precisely, it is directed toward the ideal of that unique individual.
In every existing, empirically given and limited person there is an
individual ideal of that person: the ideal of personality. Personal love
brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of ones
individuality.6
We habitually say that personal love is blind, but Hartmann corrects
this opinion. Personal love is blind to the surface of personality and its
general empirical and humanitarian aspects. Despite that, or just because
of it, personal love is capable of taking us much deeper toward the essence
of personality, toward its individual ideal, than any other form of cognition,
than any other form of love. When it comes to such depth, he who loves is
the only one who sees; while he who is without love is blind.7 We do not
see that this is the case because we have too narrow a conception of
knowledge. Just as the highest values are the individual values, so the
highest form of knowledge is the knowledge of the individual. It is
entirely wrong to limit knowledge to a thinking, reflective, or rational
consciousness of an object. Valuational knowledge, as Hartmann calls
it, is knowledge of the individual and unique, and it is based on feeling, on
sharpened and sensitive intuition for the richness of values.
Hartmann also wants to distinguish this conception of personal love
from the oft-repeated clichs regarding romantic love. He reminds us that
the bliss that a person experiences in love consists not in being in love, but
in loving. In loving, in striving toward uniting our own innermost depth
with the innermost depth of another person, personal love does not
simply aim at happiness. Speaking about happiness even obscures the
understanding of personal love more than it clarifies it. To shed more
light on the issue, he maintains that personal love is beyond happiness
and unhappiness. Happiness is secondary in love; love always involves
both suffering and joy. Ever a lover of aporias and paradoxes,
Hartmann even claims that,
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58b [II, 371]. Similarly Scheler: love is that movement wherein
every concrete individual object that possesses value achieves the highest value
compatible with its nature and ideal vocation; or wherein it attains the ideal state of
value intrinsic to its nature; The Nature of Sympathy, trans. P. Heath (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 161.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58f [II, 379].
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The suffering of one who loves can even be happy, his happiness [can] be
painful.8
Hartmann is not playing with words. In fact, he emphasizes that the
experience of love is one of those that shows the limitations and
inflexibility of our ordinary language. Personal love overcomes such
limitation. The lovers develop their own language, their own signs and
signals, by which they can in one glance gain the knowledge they need of
the soul of their lovers. Here every gesture is important. Every
movement, every smile conveys a message: the two souls are united and
yet they remain two. Personal love makes possible the participation in
each others souls. It makes possible the intuitive vision of the best and
the highest. The penetrating knowledge of personal love may be one of the
greatest mysteries of the universe, perhaps the greatest mystery of all.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58d [II, 376]. For further discussion, see Eugene Kelly, Material
EthicsofValue, chs. 8.34, 10.5, and 10.8.5.
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I I. 5
Aesthetic Object and Aesthetic Act
The experience of beauty does not remove us from the field of mystery. If
anything, it takes us even deeper into the wonders of life, into the wonders
of values that serve no direct useful purpose in life. To account for the
mysterious relevance of the useless art, philosophers have repeatedly
brought art, and our experience of it, into a too close connection with either
cognition or morality. Hartmann rejects both ideas. The essence of art is
not cognitive, nor is it moral. Art has an irreducible degree of autonomy,
and more than once Hartmann indicates that aesthetic values may have the
most elevated position in the realm of values.
Yet values such as beauty and sublimity, tragic and comic, are not
detached from other values, spiritual or nonspiritual. Nor is art without
a significant relation to both cognition and morality. The nature of art is
complex and multilayered. We will never disentangle all of its knots, but
we can avoid some of the distorting views with regard to its nature.
Further, we can bring some light to our understanding of why the
experience of beauty is so fundamentally important for the human way of
life.
Hartmann insists that aesthetics deals with beauty in all its
manifestations, not just in art. He discusses beauty in nature and human
beauty as well. Hartmann goes so far as to wonder if there is anything
in this world, which does not have an aesthetic side and which cannot
be regarded as an aesthetic object. Not only the magnificent movements
of an antelope or the splendid colors of a butterfly, but the structure of a
crystal and even a starry sky above us can lead to an experience of beauty.
In fact, it is precisely something like the starry heavens, seen far away
from the bustle of a city and its blinding lights, which has been regarded
since ancient times as the most beautiful and perfect reality that can be
seen by man. Whether or not this is so, there is a reason why beauty, in
all of its forms, has always been considered the central aesthetic value.
Those who deny the role of natural and human beauty in aesthetics
rely too heavily either on the aesthetic idea (content) or the aesthetic form.
In either case, such an idea or form is something created by the artist.
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Hartmann counters such views. Even in the case of an artistic genius,

the essence of the artistry consists not in the creative side but in the way
ofseeing, which eventually leads to a new idea or a new form. A poet, for
example, is first and foremost someone who walks through life with eyes
wide open and in doing so recognizes artistic forms and ideas in what to
others may seem to be the most ordinary things and appearances.
Just as he rejects the centrality of the form-matter distinction in
ontology, Hartmanns aesthetic analysis does not directly rely either on
the content or on the form of art. Aesthetic analysis can focus on (1) the
aesthetic object, or (2) the aesthetic act. The aesthetic object can be
further analyzed in terms of (i) its ontological structure, or (ii) its
aesthetic value character. The aesthetic act is discernible in terms of (iii)
the receptive act of the spectator, or (iv) the creative act of the artist.
Nineteenth-century aesthetics had been preoccupied with this last
aspect, especially when understood as the nature of genius. Hartmann
believes that precisely this aspect of art resists our analysis the most.
There is no science of genius, nor any aesthetics of the creative
process. Hartmanns phenomenological aesthetics centers on (iiii).
Although we cannot understand how a work of art is created, we know
that an artistic production occurs when great ideas move people and the
passion with which an idea is adhered leads to its expression. This insight
leads Hartmann to argue that a work of art has (at least) two ontological
layers. What we call a work of art clearly has a real existence. It is a
physical object, which consists of patches of paint on canvas, notes on a
piece of paper, or parts of marble (or some other material) put together into
a statue. A work of art cannot exist in the imagination of its creator; it
must be actualized in one way or another.
This material layer, which belongs to real being, is necessary but not
sufficient for a work of art. There must also be an additional layer, a layer
Hartmann calls irreal: something that contains the idea and ties it to the
real layer.1 Only when these heterogeneous layers are brought together can
we call it a work of art. To be even more precise, only when these layers do
not appear separated, when this two-fold being appears as unified, can we
properly speak about a work of art.
The secret of art consists in this relationship of appearing. The real
and material layer enables the appearance of something that is neither
real nor material, and these two layers appear organically integrated and
harmonious. The material layer forms the foreground, and the irreal layer
1
See Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 5, 8293, and ch. 41, 45767. See also Hartmann, Das
ProblemdesgeistigenSeins, ch. 46cd, 4246.
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provides the background. What lies in the background is never realized

or materialized by and through the foreground. It is only made to appear,
to become apparent, to shine through. The essence of art is not in the object
that appears, but in the way in which it appears; it is not in the whatbut
in the how. An artistic object thus has a unique kind of existence; it floats
between two heterogeneous layers, without residing in either one. An
artistic object exists only in this interactive unity.
It is noteworthy that Hartmann calls the background layer irreal
rather than ideal. An ideal being is, for him, always something that has a
certain necessity in it. A moral value, or a logical principle, reveals a
certain (moral or logical) ought. An idea subsisting in the background
layer of a work of art and appearing through its real front layer has a
different modalitythat of possibility. Such an idea helps us see what
couldbe.
Hartmann associates ideas with the spiritual realm of being. Recall
that he distinguishes between personal spirit (the spirit of an individual
human being), historical-objective spirit (the spirit of time in one group
of people or culture), and objectified spirit (the spirit objectified as an
institution or a work of a certain kind). An idea leading to a work of art
can be associated with all three aspects of the spiritual life. A personal
spirit is the one that comes up with this idea, and the idea may be the
expression of the spirit of ones time and culture, or it can stand in an
opposition to that historical-objective spirit. Be it as it may, such an idea
is objectified in a work of art, just as a legal idea can be objectified
through law and the institutions that implement it.
In the case of law, the institutions implementing it have already
materialized. With a work of art, such an implementation must always be
done anew. The creator of a work of art sets up an idea, that is, a certain
spiritual content, which is then given expression through the material layer.
This spiritual content is irreal because it requires a living spirit to let it
shine through the real layer always anew. To be experienced as a work of
art, the spiritual content deposited in the material layer must be pulled
out, freed, and made alive by a living spirit.
This view leads Hartmann to formulate two laws of the
objectification of a work of art: (i) Its spiritual content can be
maintained only if it is tied to a real and sensible material and carried
by it in accordance with the form into which this material is shaped. (ii)
This spiritual content, as carried by formed matter, always requires a
living spirit, the spirit that recognizes and understands it. It requires a
spirit for whom this content can appear, mediated by the formed matter.
These laws of objectification clarify both the ontological reality and the
ontological irreality of a work of art. They also illuminate for us that the
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threefold relation is required for the experience of a work of art: the

relation between formed matter, spiritual content, and the living spirit that
connects them.
The aesthetic act is no less complex than the aesthetic object. Just as
we cannot unveil the secret of dialectical thinking, not much can be said
as a way of analysis with regard to the creative act. Referring to the title
of Kants third Critique (Kritik der Urtheilskraft / Critique of Power of
Judgment), Hartmann says that the essence of art as a Kraft consists in
the artistic ability to find with somnambulistic certainty the right form
for the idea the artist is trying to express: He can struggle to find this
right form for a long time and difficult temptations, but at the end it must
be that, once he had found it, he has complete certainty in it, that is, he
recognizes it with intuitive certainty, as the only adequate form.2
If we ignore the creative aspect of the act, we can still distinguish
between (i) the moment of perception, (ii) the moment of satisfaction (or
the experience of pleasure), and (iii) the moment of evaluation. Kant and
the aestheticians that follow him talk about the experience of pleasure or
displeasure, but they collapse all three moments into that one.
Hartmann pays special attention to the first moment, that is, to the
living feeling of aesthetic values. This feeling is unique for aesthetic
experience: language does not have names for many of its aspects, nor
does our thinking have corresponding concepts for them. Aesthetic
feeling and aesthetic perception should not be identified with sensory
experience. To clarify this distinction, Hartmann gives a short
evolutionary account of perception, and distinguishes between the
perception of the first order and the second order. Our initial,
primitive way of perceiving was always immediate and affectionate.
Emotions and affectionate reactions could not be separated from the
objectified qualities of the perceived object. During the course of
time, human beings have developed an objective way of perceiving
reality, the way that either excludes the affective aspects of the perceived
fragments of reality, or overlooks them. Our perception has become
more practically oriented and further detached from the emotional aspects
of things.
In our cognitive experience, the puzzle is the following: How can
something that is sensible (objects of perception) appear through something
else that is not sensible (mental representations)? In aesthetic experience,
the puzzle is reversed: How can something that is not sensible (an idea)
appear through something that is sensible (for example, patches of color on
the canvas)?
2
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 41d, 466.
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In addition to our cognitive looking at something, in aesthetic

experience there is also a different way of perception, which Hartmann
characterizes as lookingthroughsomething. This properly aesthetic way
of looking he calls the perception of a second and higher order. In a
landscape in front of us, besides its physical characteristics, we
immediately sense the mood (such as calmness, or a tension before a
storm). In the face of the person passing by, in addition to the parts of the
face, we sense the persons suffering or joy. This perception of the second
order is creative in the case of the artist and re-creative in the case of the
observer. Perception of the second order is constitutive for our experience
of aesthetic values.3
In this regard, aesthetic values are different from any other kind. During
a creative or re-creative act of perception, we do not perceive only aesthetic
values. Often, vital values (health, strength, etc.), goods as values (wealth,
good living conditions, etc.), cognitive values (knowledge, truth), or moral
values (goodness, truthfulness, justice, etc.) are perceived as well. The
perception of aesthetic values rides on the back of the perception of other
values.4 In other words, the perception of aesthetic values is conditioned by
our ability to perceive nonaesthetic values.
Just as goodness is the symbol of all moral values, beauty is the central
representative of all aesthetic values. Beauty does not depend on what is
represented and perceived but on how it appears. That is why aesthetic
values are not general (like vital and moral values), but have a special
value for each aesthetic object and for each observer. They are individual
and unique values, insofar as they are values that cannot be anticipated
in advance, prior to our experience of such objects.
How is it, then, that two observers, looking at the same painting, can
have such different experiences: one perceives it as beautiful while the
other does not?
According to Hartmann, this is so because, aesthetically, not
ontologically, every work of art is essentially incomplete. It has to be
completed by the observer, and reaction to such a work becomes an active
process of completion. This is why two observers, or one and the same
observer at different times and in dissimilar situations, can observe the
same work in such diverse ways.
These deviations do not imply the relativity of aesthetic values.
Hartmann explains the issue regarding the alleged relativity of values
by differentiating between the relativity of the feeling of values and the
relativity of the judgment regarding values. The same distinction holds for
3
4
See Hartmann, sthetik, chs. 14, 4282.

Hartmann borrows this expression from Schelers FormalisminEthics, 48.
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all kinds of values. The narrowness of an individuals awareness of values

and sensibility toward them can vary to a significant degree. An individual
can be well attuned for the perception of a certain fragment of values, but
oblivious to many other values composing its complex net. It is similar
with the degree of sensibility of one culture or one age. Certain frequently
occurring types of situations stimulate our perception of some values, but
lead us to neglect or overlook others.
The fact that the aesthetic sensibilities and taste of one individual and
one epoch change does not imply that aesthetic values themselves change.
Nor does it entail that they are relative. Just as the objective validity of one
mathematical judgment does not mean that every person, or even every
mathematically informed person, would grasp and approve of it, this
cannot be expected from aesthetic judgments. Objective validity in both
cases means only that those who do grasp such a judgment can accept it
and approve of it, because in the process of grasping they feel its internal
value. With an adequate attitude, the aesthetic values of importance for
one epoch (culture, nation) can be valid and accepted for those living in
different epochs and with differently oriented spirit: this is possible only
if such values are in essence absolute; their [alleged] relativity . . . is only
the relativity of the temporary and changeable directions of the feeling of
value.5
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 29c, 362. See also Nicolai Hartmann, Einfhrung in die
Philosophie(Osnabrck: L. Hanckel, 1949), 1757.
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I I. 6
Aesthetic Values
Hartmann thinks that there have been more misconceptions with regard
to aesthetics than with regard to axiology. The starry heavens of values are
always distant, and our ignorance and lack of sensitivity prevent us from
fully comprehending the values that seem so remote. Aesthetic values,
such as beautiful, comic, charming, and tragic, appear closer because
they are part and parcel of our everyday experiences. Even the tragic and
sublime lurk in the background of our lives and do not appear too
remote or unreachable.
In fact, a problem with aesthetic values is that they may be too close.
They are so close that it is hard to establish any distance to classify them
properly. They are also fluid and therefore difficult to capture in ordinary
language; a face that appears beautiful from one angle need not appear so
if we simply change our angle. Aesthetic values are so individual that our
linguistic capacity lags far behind our aesthetic feeling for values. Only
a few fairly general aesthetic values have names because our language is
incapable of reaching most of them.
One of the reasons we do not attempt to develop a more precise
language is that we think of aesthetic values as having secondary
importance. They are at best considered to be a spice of life, a
welcome but unnecessary addition to the food that sustains us. Although
the depth of our craving for aesthetic values may suggest something else,
we stick to our belief in the impractical and negligible role of aesthetic
values and show the tendency to subsume them under cognitive or, even
more frequently, under moral values.
Hartmann continually fights against the ingrained cognitivistic and
moralistic interpretations of aesthetic values. He also holds that aesthetic
values are higher, and weaker, than cognitive and moral values. In
accordance with his ontological view, cognitive and moral values have a
founding role for the realization of aesthetic values. The foundation always
comes from below. Meaning, by contrast, always descends from above. In
bestowing meaning, the sublime will become of utmost importance. As we
will later see, the experience of sublimity may bring us to heights that
would
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otherwise remain impenetrable. Before coming to this fascinating view, we

must prepare ourselves with some groundwork that will shed further light
on the relationship of the aesthetic with other kinds of values.
Cognitive, moral, and aesthetic values are all spiritual, yet they have
different carriers. In the case of cognitive values, the carriers are cognitive
judgments; such judgments are valuable when they correspond to the given
states of affairs. For moral values, the carriers are always human beings as
persons; acts and attitudes of persons are what we judge as good or evil,
just or unjust. Anything can be a carrier of aesthetic values, as long as it
appears and is perceived in a certain way. The possibility of appearing of
the irreal background in the real foreground is available only to a living
spirit. An aesthetic value of something belongs to it only in relationship
with someone who perceives it in the proper way. When this occurs the
two meanings of aesthetics, the original, which refers to what appears
() and the latter, which is related to artistic taste, are combined
together.
There is another significant difference between cognitive judgments and
our experience of works of art. Even Kant tries to preserve this distinction
by separating determinative from reflective judgments. Determinative
judgments are those in which we subsume the immediately perceived
particulars (the manifold of appearances) under already established
general concepts (or universals). Reflective judgments are those in which
a proper universal does not pre-exist, but has to be found in accordance
with what is immediately perceived. Kant makes this distinction only in
the introduction of the Critique of Judgment, but it is clear that, in
retrospect, he considers cognitive and moral judgments to be
determinative, while aesthetic (and teleological) judgments are reflective.
Hartmann does not discuss aesthetic values in terms of judgments,
but retains the idea that cognitive and moral judgments are based on
determinative concepts. Far more important for him is the disparity that
exists in the relationship between the background and the foreground in
the cases of concepts and works of art. With concepts, this relationship is
conventional and attached to them from the outside. Aristotles concepts,
such as and , make sense only within the framework
of his metaphysical system. In the case of scientific theory, its concepts
are based on the current state of research and knowledge. With
changes in our philosophical and scientific interests and insights, such
concepts are either radically changed or entirely abandoned. We can
recreate them for historical reason, but this possibility only underlines
how arbitrary and conventional these concepts are.
This relationship is internal and based on inner affinities in a work of
art. It does not depend on any external factor, broader context, or outside
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framework. Rather, a work of art creates its own framework, and the
relationship between background and foreground is made visible within the
realm of the work. While a concept has an essence outside itself, the
essence of an artistic work is always internally established. This is why,
unlike ever- changing philosophical and scientific concepts, works of art
have a different kind of stability and greater historical endurance. This is
also why they have the ability to detach their observers from the reality
that surrounds them and carry them into another world.
Although cognitive experience relies heavily on concepts, Hartmann
argues that concepts are not and do not lead to the highest degree of
cognition. Nor are principles the highest degree of knowledge. This may
sound shocking when coming from a philosopher, but Hartmann stands
firmly behind this conviction. Concepts and principles, including the
categorial concepts, are important and indispensible, but they capture only
the general features of various fragments of reality. They fail to capture
individual characteristics, and it is precisely what is individual and unique
that Hartmann considers real in the highest degree. (Recall that the
defining categories of any real being, regardless of the strata to which it
belongs, are the categories of individuality and temporality.) While our
cognition captures the general features of objects, in the case of aesthetic
experience perceived objects appear in their full individuality and
uniqueness. This is why aesthetic experience may lead to a higher form
of cognition. The highest and the most difficult kind of knowledge is that
of actual existing beings, of individuals. For that kind of knowledge, we
must rely on intuition rather than reason-based general concepts, on the
attentiveness to what is in front of us rather than on the power of
abstraction.
While our cognitive values provide stability in the experienced world
by boxing things into its categories, moral values generate
stabilitybyshowing us what ought to be. Both cognitive and moral values
are heavy; they tie us to the world as it is, or to the world as it ought to
be. By contrast, aesthetic values are light. They lift us up above the
given and the commanded; they show us what could be. Aesthetic values
do not depend on whether or not someone like Hamlet and King Lear,
Prince Myshkin or Dmitry Karamazov really exist in the world. Nor do
they depend on the victory of good over evil. All that is important is the
artistic formation of scenes and characters that enables an idea to shine
through the real foreground.
Aesthetic objects do not demand anything of us except the openness of
the mind and the perceptive appreciation of the world. When we are openminded and capable of perception of the higher order, aesthetic values
seem to come to us as gifts. They fly to us and create an impression that
everything is good, not in the moral sense of good, but in the sense of
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meaningfulness. They give an impression that, somehow, everything is just

as it should be. It is as if aesthetic values have an extraordinary liberating
power. As ontologically speaking aesthetic objects have a floating
existence, the experience of aesthetic values creates in us a pleasurable
impression of the lightness of being. This feeling of pleasure is
primarily spiritual, not sensible. It occurs only with perception of the
higher order, with the experience of harmony between the background
idea and the foreground material used to express this idea.
We encounter a play of forms in the experience of a work of art, rather
than something useful and purposeful. Play, playing, and playfulness
contrast the practical aspect of life, focused as it is on usefulness and
expedience. They stand in opposition to all attempts to control reality;
cognitively, morally, technologically, politically, or economically. This
does not mean that artistic play of ideas and forms is entirely indifferent
to reality, or that is not subsumed under the laws and constraints of that
reality. Rather, it simply means that their relationship is based on different
grounds and functions. The playfulness of art may not necessarily be
useful in the most direct sense, but it sheds a special light over reality. It is
as if it elevates this reality against its own weight, against its own
limitations.
Just as life is useless from the perspective of immaterial objects, so is
spirit useless to living beings. There may well be living beings without
spirit, but life comes to its highest point in spirit and through spirit. At
this point something radiates from it and illuminates that life. In the
light of this illumination, everything becomes meaningful, even without
any practical implication, or any discoverable purpose. We associate art
with luxury, but Hartmann goes beyond that. Useless things are the most
sublime; they are the ones that bestow meaning on everything else,
including our cognitive and moral values. While the world is built from
bottom up, its meaning comes from the top and permeates to the bottom.
That is the significance of art: it is of no use to the life of an organism, or
to its conscious life. Yet, through the experience of art we reach a
culminating point that illuminates all of lifes other aspects. Art serves
more than a cultivating, educational, or moralizing function. The true
role of art is something incomparably higher.
Only after considering the role of truth in art and the nature of the
sublime can we fully grasp this role.
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II.7
Truth in Art
Hartmann distinguishes between four different kinds of truth: (i) factual

(or cognitive) truth; (ii) living truth; (iii) essential (or ideal) truth, and
(iv) artistic truth. In this section we will explore their differences and
their interconnectedness.
A work of art is the result of a free, creative spirit. To be free and
creative does not primarily mean to strive toward something new or
unknown. Rather, it refers to the ability to intuitively grasp the inner
unity of a complex structurenot just in one layer but in all of them
together. A work of art is free insofar as it explores and finds a new way
of forming something in the real foreground that is hidden in the
background. That something has to appear in a unified way.
Artistic freedom may also lead to falsification of experienced reality.
Hartmann mentions three causes for such falsifications. In the vast
majority of cases, the falsification is due to the technical inability of the
artist to give adequate form to a chosen idea. Second, it can also emerge as
a result of exaggerated idealism, which leads an artist to portray things as
more beautiful than they can be. Finally, the falsification may be due to
the ethical intention that drives the artist toward overemphasized
pedagogical effects. This last form of falsification can happen even to
the best artists, as we witness in some late works of Goethe and Tolstoy.
In order to appear authentic, an idea (or an ideal) must be grounded in a
value that corresponds to the tendencies of the actual historical and
ethical circumstances of some people. In addition to the requirements of
dealing with the content of art, there is also a formal prerequisite
requiring the ideal to be represented in its proper concreteness and
vitality. This concretely represented ideal affects people more than any
scientific truth or any abstract moral or religious precept.
All art must strive toward truth. That truth does not have to be factual
or theoretical cognitive truth; it is not a mere correspondence with an
existing reality. In order to articulate the kind of truth striven toward in
art, Hartmann focuses on what he calls poetry. By poetry he means
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virtually all literature (he considers Shakespeare and Dostoevsky as

exemplary poets). He believes the demand for truth in poetry to be the
clearest and the strongest. What we expect from poetry is not a factual but
livingtruth. By that, Hartmann has in mind an agreement with real life,
not in all of its minute details, but in its essential features. A living truth
demands an adequacy in the presentation of types of characters, as well as
the types of human situations, conflicts, accidents, and human destinies.
Hartmann maintains that every work of art has numerous layers. In
many cases, the number of layers exceeds those we distinguished in
ontology of real being. Besides the already mentioned real foreground
and irreal background, there are several middle layers in every work of
art. In these layers we can discern the moral character of a represented
individual: his egoism or altruism, courage or fear, sense of responsibility
or recklessness, etcetera. We find an individual experiencing moral
conflicts and examine his reaction to their various types. Remember
Dmitry in Dostoevskys great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, who finds
himself in a critical situation when the extremely beautiful Katerina
Ivanovna begs him for money? Katerina begs in order to save the
honor of her father. Dmitry wins her heart and trust, and also the heart
and trust of the reader when, much to Katerinas surprise, he gives her a
large sum of money and does not take advantage of her. His later
recklessness cannot wholly erase the readers
remembrance of Dmitrys magnanimity.
Yet another layer develops in Dostoevskys novel, which reveals not
Dmitrys inner world but his overall destiny. The course of ones life
cannot be portrayed through any single detail or episode. Rather, this
involves many critical situations and relationships with other figures.
Poetry infiltrates individual instances, providing clues for the characters
overall life, even when the narrative does not follow this life from the
beginning to the end.
The main function of representative art is to make us see.1 Just as
philosophy teaches us to think and religion teaches us faith, art teaches
us to see things. Learning how to see is by no means an easy task. In the
multiplicity of data and situations, we must discern what is typically
human and what characterizes us as living human beings.
Getting to know people as they really are usually has a sobering,
negative effect. Yet art in general (and poetry in particular) is directed
toward the positive. It does not teach us to reject but to appreciate. Art
invites us to slow down and pause in our observation of reality and people
living in it. It compels us to look at people with compassion, to see them
through the eyes
1
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 23a, 2934.
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of one who admires and loves. Art directs our attention to that which we
customarily overlook in our normal lives. The poets gaze is in the
direction of lifes hidden treasures.
Here Hartmann touches on something of great significance. Our
knowledge of people in practical life is aimed at the general and the
typical. Poetry teaches us to observe and focus on the atypical, unique, and
seemingly accidental. In this context, we recall Hartmanns differentiation
between justice and various forms of love from his moral philosophy. A
practical man recognizes the people to avoid, distinguishing them from
those proper and just who may be useful as friends. This glimpse of reality,
through the eyes of a practical man, is detached, cold, and calculating.
A poet cannot see the world in this way. He shows us what is worth
paying attention to, regardless of any practical interest we may have. In
his compassion and caring attention, he penetrates into the depths of the
human soul. Compassion means suffering with; when we read of
Dmitrys recklessness and foolishness, of his naivet and essential
goodness, we suffer with him the injustices of the cruel world that will
not tolerate a wasteful person. Dostoevskys art leads us to observe and
follow Dmitry without judging him. Although we, the readers, cannot
understand all of his motives and actions (Dmitry does not understand
them himself), we take him as he is and follow him on the path of his life
with a loving gaze.
Art can instruct us, lead us to new discoveries, and make us wiser.
But these are not the only aims of art. Hartmann surprises us when he
says that one of the basic functions of art is to cheer us up. Life is often
harsh and unpleasant. Against this living truth stands a quest for beauty
that Hartmann connects with the idea that art enlivens us. The quest for
beauty must be synthesized in a work of art. Paradoxically, it is precisely
the harshness and unpleasantness of the living truth that allows beauty to
shine forth and fulfill yet a higher function of art. This occurs only in great
art, and only in its deepest and most hidden layers. In those layers we are
no longer dealing with that which belongs to existing humanity in general,
but with the ideal of humanity. Even more importantly, we are dealing
with the
most supreme of them all, theidealofanindividual.
Hartmann declares the ability to make what is great and ideal visible
through the insignificant and common as the chief function of art. The
presentation of the ugly and repulsive in the middle layers admits the
appearance of the great and ideal in the deepest layers. In these deep layers
we get a glimpse of what humanity could become, of what its true ideals
are. In rare works of art, we go even further and glimpse an individual
ideal. This is the same ideal that we sense in love, especially in radiant
virtue and personal love.
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To illustrate this point, let us return to TheBrothersKaramazov. There is

something akin to the shining of pure gold in the wisdom of Father Zosima
and the purity of his pupil Alyosha. In Dmitrys love for Grushenka, in his
struggles with poverty, unruliness and competition with his father for the
heart of the same woman, we perceive an almost otherworldly devotion
of one human being to another. Dmitrys character shines through with
the brightest light of all in the culminating scene where he nearly kills his
father (Smerdyakov does as soon as Dmitry leaves the house). He learns
that Grushenka has been rejecting him because she has been waiting for
her first love to reappear. When he finally comes, Dmitry realizes that for
the sake of Grushenkas happiness he must remove himself by
committing suicide. Just as he is about to make this sacrifice with the
complete devotion of his soul, he gains Grushenkas love once and forever.
This drama would be enough for many artists, but Dostoevsky further
intensifies it. Just a few hours after Dmitry receives the gift that his entire
being craves mostGrushenkas lovehe is accused of murdering his
father. After a horrific examination that pinpoints him as the murderer,
Dmitry, exhausted, falls asleep on top of a wooden chest and dreams of
burned villages and starving children. (The living truth must never be left
far behind for the ideal truth to shine forth.) He wakes up and finds that,
while he was asleep, an unknown person placed a pillow beneath his head,
despite his recent accusation. In gratitude for the simple and ultimately
useless gesture of pity, Dmitry forgets about his accusation and the death of
his father. This poorly educated, unruly, and sometimes immoral character
realizes that spontaneous acts of human kindness are what elevates us to
the highest levels.
Through this section, Dostoevsky shows the individual ideal of Dmitry
in its most developed stage. Here Dostoevsky reaches the rare height of
artistic creation. This point is easily missed because it occurs in the span
of a few paragraphs in an 800-page novel. After many dramatic events, this
seemingly anti-climactic point transpires, harmonizing all, from the words
in the first physical layer to the deepest individual ideal of Dmitry in the
most hidden spiritual layer.2
Hartmann rightly compares this moment of insight into the core of the
characters personality to personal love. Only a person who sincerely cares
for another, only one deeply in love, can see that: He perhaps even loves
only because he can see another human being in the light of the individual
ideal, that is, in the ideality which distinguishes this person from any
other.
2
For further discussion, see Predrag Cicovacki, DostoevskyandtheAffirmationofLife

(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), 22738.
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It is unusual that even a poet is capable of such perception, and in this he is

similar to a lover.3 The poet may be in a more advantageous position than
a lover, for he can love more than one character, while this love can be felt
for only one person in real life.
Hartmanns view is undoubtedly controversial. Be that as it may, he
believes that only the living and essential truths combined establish what
he calls an artistic truth. To miss either of these two fundamental truths,
or to misrepresent their mutual relationship, leads to falsehood and poor
art. A truth of art, then, emerges only with the satisfaction of these strict
demands:
1. An artist must make visible the essential connections of human life, the
real as well as only possible (or fictional) life.
2. An artistic truth must be carried out by the artistic form that

3.
establishes an apparent structural whole in accordance with the living

truth.
This structural whole is manifested not only in some of the layers of
the work of art, but in a work of art as a whole, in the unity of all of
its diverse layers.
This is what it takes to establish a truth in art, and it also explains why this
truth is rarely reached, only in the greatest art.
Now we are in a better position to understand why Hartmann finds it
denigrating for the truth in art to be subsumed either under cognitive or
ethical truth. The truth of art relies on cognitive and ethical truths and
builds upon them. Nevertheless, it penetrates beyond, toward the highest
degree of beauty: the sublime.
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 12d, 17980.
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I I. 8
Sublime
There is no strict hierarchy in the galaxy of aesthetic values. Nonetheless,

one value appears to shine more brightly than others: the sublime. All
great and serious art, says Hartmann, strives toward and approaches the
sublime.
The sublime is by no means limited to aesthetic values or aesthetic
phenomena. The word sublime refers to all which, in accordance to its
strength or greatness, (i) overwhelms every measure, (ii) creates in us the
feeling of smallness and weakness, but also (iii) the awareness of spiritual
elevation, and (iv) the feeling of security in front of the immeasurable.
Kant was among the first to connect wonder and awe to the experience
of certain outstanding phenomena in nature that we call the sublime. It is
not accidental that he illustrates the idea of sublimity with a great storm
on a surging sea and an avalanche sweeping down a mountaintop. Other
natural examples of the sublime are the stillness of a vast plain, or the
dignity of the starry heavens above us, where the experience of
sublimity is tied to the feeling of quiet lawfulness and unmistakable
regularity of the virtually invisible movement.
The presence of something sublime in human life is frequently obscured
because it is difficult to establish needed distance. A person who stoically
suffers great pain can be sublime, just as it can be someone who sacrifices
his good health or even life for a great cause. These cases of sublimity
overlap with the moral realm. Also, they delve deeper toward clarifying
the nature of the sublime than examples of the sublime in nature.
Hartmann does not surprise us when he says that the purest examples
of the sublime can be found in the realm of myth and religion. The surprise
comes when he adds that philosophical thinking that purports to give us
a picture of the world as a whole may belong to this category. Although
he does not clarify this remark, it is likely that he has the great thinkers of
the past in mind, such as Spinoza and Leibniz, whom he greatly admires
and whose thinking purports to penetrate into the deepest secrets of the
universe in its wholeness.
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The experience of the sublime is therefore not limited to our

experience of art, and even within diverse forms of art we discover it
in various degrees. In painting, the admixture of the sublime is
accomplished both in some of the most ambitious projects (like
Michelangelos Sistine Chapel) and the most penetrating portraits
(such as the late self-portraits of Rembrandt). In literature, the most
natural places to encounter the sublime are in great heroic epics (like
Homers), in which the destinies of heroes are so tragic that they
outgrow human measure and form.
Hartmann recognizes even purer examples of the sublime in the
nonrepresentational arts: in architecture and classical music. Architecture
displays a static sublimity: in stillness, peace, and grandeur. As much as
he admires the majesty of Gothic cathedrals, Hartmann goes as far as to
say that the Doric temples of ancient Greece first attained the level of the
sublime that, in their simplicity, have never been equaled.
The sublime in music is displayed in exactly the opposite way of
architecture:
Music displays the sublime at the very depths of its spiritual
dynamic, that is, at the points where no representation can reach.
Music can express the sublimity of the soul, because it can
voice it in an unmediated fashion. It can strike the resonant
chords with the listener, grab him from within and enable him to
feel the sublime in the same way in which he can feel only his
experienceas his own.1
This view stands in startling opposition to Kant, who has a low opinion
of music. For him, music is an artificial play of sensations, which speaks
to the senses only. Music lacks not only certain urbanity (it can become
obtrusive to others), but, more importantly, it is deprived of thought.
Kant wonders if music even belongs to fine arts, or whether it is merely
an agreeable art.2
For Hartmann, an avid cello player, music is the greatest of all arts. It
is the only art that enters the deepest layers of the sublime. He singles out
Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier as an example. Hartmann identifies the
advantage of music in exactly the points Kant cites as its disadvantage:
The most amazing thing about music is that, in its outermost external
layers, it is able to achieve an almost adequate expression for the
1
2
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 30b, 368.

See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. W. Pluchar (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1987), sections 514; and Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), sec. 71b.
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sublime, which other arts cannot hope to do. This is possible in

part because of the absolute freedom of the play of forms in tonal
compositionsright up to the great harmonies of great works of
music, and in part also because of the renunciation of any attempt
at representationfor the contents, no matter how we recognize
in them the movement of the soul, always hover in a characteristic
indeterminacy, and only the character of their dynamism is
expressed. This indeterminacy corresponds very precisely to the
obscurity with which the sublime manifests itself.3
Despite their disagreement, Hartmann recognizes that Kant enhances

our understanding of the sublime more than any other philosopher. Kant
notes that the experience of the sublime arises whenever we confront an
object that surpasses all means by which we can conceive it. As a result,
we are unable to join these experiences in a bounded whole, either
intuitively or conceptually. In this kind of experience we, as finite
physical beings, feel overwhelmed by the grandeur of the perceived
object (or event). At the same time, we feel exalted above all finite
and conditioned beings, through the discovery that this grandeur is
rooted in the consciousness of our intelligible task. The wholeness
cannot be given through the sensory experience, but has to be grasped by
the faculty of reason.
Already convinced in the primacy of practical reason, Kant attempts to
explain the experience of awe-inspiring phenomena in nature by relating
them to mans supersensible destiny: the experience of awe-inspiring
phenomena can only be understood by relating them to the majesty of the
moral law.
Hartmann finds Kants contribution significant, but with an orientation
that is too narrow and misleading. Let us momentarily ignore that Kant
relates our experience of wonder and awe to the moral and rational realms
(we will return to this issue in the next section). What is more important
to Hartmanns discussion of the nature of the sublime is that Kant directs
us too much toward the effects of the sublime on the human soul. For
Kant, despite the immediate impression of the contrary, the sublime is
disconnected from the natural world; it is related to the ultimate nature of
the self. As a result, we learn far more about these effects of the sublime on
us, than about the structure of an object we experience as sublime.
Hartmann offers his own analysis of the sublime in the following
terms. The sublime is what is great and magnificent, regardless of its
3
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 32a, 382. Notice how in Hartmanns view obscurity may
be something positive, in contrast to Descartess quest for clear and distinct ideas.
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quantity. Also, it can be what is serious, festive, superior and penetrating

into great depth. We consider that which appears closed in itself as
superior, or as being internally perfect, in front of which we appear small
and inadequate. The sublime always appears as great, either by its power
or by its capability.
Kant believes that in the observation of something sublime there are
two feeling-moments which are in a mutual struggle. There is a negative
or repulsive moment, like the feeling of impotence or fear. Also, there is a
positive or attractive moment that is founded in the negative moment.
For Hartmann, Kants view is similar to Aristotles attempt to ground
moral virtue (something positive) on two extremes (too much and too
little), which cancel themselves and lead us toward a healthy middle. It
also parallels Hobbes conviction of the violent and unsociable nature of
humanity. This eventually leads toward establishing a social contract and a
positive form of social life, which Kant in his political essays characterizes
as unsociable sociability.
Hartmann is in principle opposed to founding a positive value on a
negative value. We will not go into his criticism of Aristotle or Hobbes
here, but will limit our remarks to Kants conception of the sublime. The
value of the sublime is not founded on a negative value. Nor is it based in
the leveling of a positive value with its negative counterpart. The
founding value need not be in the subject at all, despite the obsession of
modern philosophers always looking at the subject for a source of all
values. A founding value is almost always in the object, as its own value,
which we then experience as something simply great and superior.
Kants profound but not always correct remarks with regard to the
nature of sublimity have inspired various kinds of speculative conclusions,
which simply do not agree with the observable phenomena. As a result
of his detailed analysis of the sublime, Hartmann establishes its five
characteristics; the first three are negative and preliminary, while the last
two are defining of sublimity in the positive sense:
1. There is no need to associate the sublime with the quantitative. It
2.
can indeed be quantitative, but the vast majority of cases deal with a
greatness of a different kind, a more qualitative kind. This qualitative
kind concerns what Kant treats as the dynamically sublime in nature.
The sublime should not be identified with the pressing, fearful,
catastrophic, or anything negative in general. The negative moment
does not make the core of our experience of the sublime. Quite the
contrary to such pessimistic interpretations, our primary experience of
the sublime is the positive experience of elevation and overcoming.
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3. There is no need to relate the sublime to the transcendent and the
4.
divine, as is the case with Kants idealistic and romantic successors.

Although the sublime is experienced as overwhelming and superior,
it is nevertheless experienced as something this-worldly and near us,
natural and humanely approachable.
The founding moment of our experience of something sublime is based
on a quality of the object. Hartmann considers the sublime as a quality
of the object, insofar as we perceive it as something great and superior.
5. Instead of the feeling of inadequacy, while facing the sublime, there

emerges in us a primordial feeling of concord, a feeling of harmony
between something superior in the object and the spiritual need of the
human heart.
Hartmann considers the last two points essential. In clarifying them, he
leads us beyond the narrow bounds of aesthetics and toward something
of the greatest importance for an overall understanding of our place and
role in reality. On the basis of his considerations of the sublime, Hartmann
maintains that, From the primordial times, man feels attracted to what
is great and superior. He can only make his way through life with a
persistent longing for something imponderably imposing and excellent,
and continually seek it out. When he finds it, his heart flies out to meet it.4
This, according to Hartmanns conviction, is the basic law of all human
beings, that is, all of those who have not yet been perverted by their
education and the social form of life. Hartmann considers our tendency
toward that which is perceived as great and superior among the morally
most beautiful features of humanity. This tendency is not aesthetic in
itself, but it easily transforms into an aesthetic perspective mixed with
admiration
and devotion.
Greatness emits a sort of primary magic. It has a magnetic effect
that pulls the human heart toward itself. The unspoiled man carries this
tendency to revere and live with the gaze directed toward something
higher than him. This tendency reveals a primordial human need for
meaning: Everything that is great bestows meaning by itself. Dimly and
not always clearly, man senses in it a secret depth and the source of
something meaningful.5
Returning to the sublime for a moment, Hartmann defines it as the
appearing of something of overwhelming magnitude and superiority
which cannot itself be given in the sensible foreground of the object, as
long as this appearing corresponds to the spiritual need for greatness and
4
5

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playfully overcomes the small-mindedness which resists it.6 The sublime

is the degree of beauty that corresponds to our deeply ingrained need for
the great and superior; it is the beauty in the playful experience by which
we are able to overcome the resistance of our small-minded interests and
preoccupations. This experience is possible in our exposure to the great
works of art (although it is not limited to them). In great works of art, there
is harmony between the idea hidden in the deepest layers and the form of
its appearing in the front layers. In its deepest layers, great art approaches
and converges toward an ungraspable moral-metaphysical something.
The ungraspable and yet discernible something cannot be captured by
words. This convergence, Hartmann claims, is the convergence toward the
sublime. The sublime is that degree of beauty in which the most inner
layers have an unconditional dominance.
Hartmann states that in the experience of the sublime in great art
human thought must not say everything; it must not be entirely open and
not everything should be shown. It is the mark of a far superior and purer
art that it affects us only through appearance and that it uses words only as
a stimulator of our imagination.7
There are elements of great art in all profound thinkers. They arrive at
the limits of that what can and cannot be said, of what can and cannot be
expressed in thoughts and words.
Does Hartmann himself feel those limits? Does he reach the points
where the best we can do is to stimulate our imagination and aim toward
something inexpressible, something sublime? We can never know a
definitive answer, but we can recall the Introduction to Ethics, where he
claims that philosophy signifies a new kind of love for the task in hand, a
new devotion, a new reverence for what is great.
Does Hartmanns philosophy intend to merge cognitive, ethical, and
aesthetic values? Or, rather, does it aim toward the establishment of some
kind of aestheticism as the highest point of our philosophical endeavor?
6
7
Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 31c, 377.

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II.9
Critique of Moralism
In his work, OntheFoundationsofOntology, Hartmann has a

section with the strange title: The Nimbus of the
Sublime.1 Nimbus means an aura of splendor about
any person or thing. It also refers to a halo displayed in
numerous frescos, icons, and paintings of the saints.
The other noun in the title is in quotations, indicating
that Hartmann is talking about pseudo- sublimity. He
wants to call our attention to an aura of sublimity
attached to something to which it does not belong. This
section is part of a larger text that deals with the
relationship of ideal toward real being. Since Platos
time, philosophers have attached a special halo around
ideal beings because of their a-temporality and unchangeability.
Hartmann does not deny that ideal beings, values
included, are permanent. What he objects to is their
treatment as higher forms of beings, as something
sublime. Values as such, in their ideality, are not the
highest forms of being. They are only the measure of
the value of real beings. To attach the nimbus of
sublimity to ideal beings means to devaluate the real
and neglect the beings that deserve our attentiveness
and appreciation: the real individuals.
In ontology, the highest peak of the nimbus of
sublimity is reached with the ontological arguments
proofsfor the existence of God. This weakest link
of traditional ontology is masterfully exposed by Kant
in
the CritiqueofPureReason: this kind of fallacy consists in substituting
the idea of being for being itself, a logical predicate for
reality, essence for existence.
It is thus a great puzzle that Kant himself, in the CritiqueofPractical
Reason, postulates the existence of God (and the
immortality of the soul) as necessary for the completion
9/24/2013 4:48:20 PM
of his moral project. As Schopenhauer reacts in jest,

Kant reinserts through the back door what he so
pompously kicks out of the front. He resorts to
sophisms similar to the proofs of Gods existence that
he previously exposed as untenable.
1
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More importantly for this context, morality becomes

so elevated for Kant that it turns into what I will call
moralism. He attaches the aura of splendor to an
abstract moral law. A moral agent becomes treated as
an exemplification of practical reason, not as a living
human being. Real human beings are only crooked
wood, out of which nothing straight can be made.2
Human passions, which drive our choices and behavior,
are just inclinations we need to overcome. All moral
behavior must not simply be in concordance with the
moral law, but stem from the conception of the moral
law. Intellectual theories and abstract constructions are
put ahead of living human beings and their natural
concerns. This is how morality turns into moralism.
While intellectualism is based on unfounded
optimism, moralism is an expression of profound
pessimism. This is pessimism with regard to the order
and structure inherent in the world and, no less
importantly, in human nature. Moralism is an overreaction to the imperfections of the world and the
contradictoriness of human nature. It is an impulse to
restructure the fawed world and strengthen the
crooked wood of humanity, once and forever.
Moralism is an attempt to recreate the creation, so that
those who behave virtuously are assured of a happy life.
Moralism is more than a moral phenomenon; it is a
refection of the modern way of life, of the attitudes of
modern man toward himself and his world. Moralism
finds its symbolic expression in the conception of man
as a homofaber, man the toolmaker, and the development of technology
and industry. As the dominant activity of modern man,
Arendt singles out fabrication: the making of artifacts,
of something that does not exist in nature and that can
only serve human needs and purposes. She clearly sees
the other side of this attitude as well. Arendt calls it by
its Latin name:
contemptusmundi; contempt for the world as it is, as opposed to an attitude
of acceptance and appreciation of that same world.
Arendt correctly characterizes moralism as an
attempt to fabricate reality. When all such fabrications
fail to deliver the expected harmony of the world and
happiness for virtuous persons, modern man turns
toward despair. The attempts to control reality and
arrange it in accordance with our sublime ideals
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bring the world to the brink of self-destruction.

Modernism turns into postmodernisma rejection of the
search for truth and the relativization of values. If
values can be founded neither in Gods revelation nor in
human creativity, it appears that values cannot be
anything but arbitrary and relative. In this poisonous
atmosphere of relativism
2
in
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,
Kant:Selections, ed. L. W. Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1988), 419.
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CritiqueofMoralism
119
and subjectivism, the best option seems to be an

escape from reality. In the twentieth century, the
escape manifested itself in the abandonment of
individuality and the merging into a herd of men. In
the twenty-first century, due to an unprecedented
development of digital technology, the preferred form of
escape is turning toward virtual reality.
What does Hartmann have to ofer instead of moralism?
To appreciate his ofer, first recall how he reacts to
intellectualism. The essence of his view is summed up
in a poignant statement: being itself is disharmonious,
and confict is the form of its being. There are
inevitable conficts and tensions in the realm of being,
which is why we encounter aporias and antinomies
when dealing with ontological and epistemological
issues. The presence of such conficts and tensions
does not prevent the possibility of order and structure,
but it does exclude a possibility of the entirely
harmonious existence.
There is a significant analogy between Hartmanns
responses to intellectualism and moralism. Conficts
and antinomies of values are undeniable facts of human
life. They do not present us the choices between one
positive and one negative value, but instead between
two positive (or two negative) values. They cannot be
resolved without violating one of the values. Some of
the conficts we face in real life are so complex that
the choice is far from clear. In those cases we have to
rely on our feeling of value, on personal and collective
experience, and a careful perception of the context.
The expectation of a harmonious way of life, for
example, the one in which virtue and happiness will be
fully proportionate to each other, is wishful thinking. It
is an unfounded expectation that fuels our utopian
dreams and reformist attempts that are doomed to
fail. Just as intellectualism is a distortion of reality by
imposing on it categories that do not apply to it,
moralism is an attempt to turn reality into what it is not
and what it cannot become.
For Isaiah Berlin, the inescapable presence of value
conficts, together with the horrible track record of
their attempted resolutions, is the sure sign that life is
essentially tragic. Not so for Hartmann. Human tragedy
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consists not in the presence of confict and violations of

one of the values involved, but in ceasing to strive
toward the best we can do. The best we can do does not
mean choosing the right action, but consistently
striving toward the highest way of life.
In ethics, Hartmann connects this striving with the
search for meaning. In aesthetics, he ties it to the
appreciation of the sublime. Although distinguishable,
these two attitudes have much in common. He never
tires of emphasizing the relevance of useless values in
ethics. Useful values
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TheAnalysisofWonder
are indispensible for the ordering and structuring of

life, as well as the satisfaction of our practical needs.
Order and structure, however, do not bring meaning.
Satisfaction of practical needs sustains our existence,
but it does not reveal to us its meaning. Useless values,
for which Hartmann primarily has in mind various
forms of love, are the ones that bestow a sense of
meaning on our lives. They illuminate our existence in a
diferent light and stimulate us to go on, fy higher and
strive toward its most elevated peaks.
It is of the utmost importance for Hartmann that we
can find examples of the highest and best not just in
our thoughts, belief systems and works of art, but in
nature as well. The sublime in nature is a special
point at which we come back to the appreciation of
reality. Put diferently, we come back to this original
sense of wonder, which Hartmann believes is of essence
not only for philosophy but also for our humanity. The
meaning we discover through the experience of love
and sublimity is a meaning without closure and
definiteness. Paradoxically put, it is meaning without
meaning, or meaningless meaningfulness. This
meaning is something fuid, clearly felt yet impossible
to articulate either in cognitive definitions or moral
precepts. It does not exclude conficts, struggles,
disappointments,
or
suferings.
Nevertheless,
it
inspires rather than to prescribe. It leads, guides,
elevates, and makes us fully alert, appreciative and
alive, without explaining, demanding, or commanding.
This meaning is not something we earn, deserve, or
control. It is a gift.
If philosophy is the analysis of wonder, then the
analysis part of it deals more with structure and order,
with useful values and the necessities of life. The
wonder part deals with meaning, with useless values,
with love and the sublime, with the appreciation of
the miracle of existence. In Hartmanns ontology and
epistemology,
analysis
prevails.
In
ethics
and
aesthetics, wonder plays a more prominent role. Those
who know only his ontological and epistemological
writings are exposed to the mere skeleton of his
philosophy. When we come to ethics and aesthetics, we
immediately face an embodied living being and
miraculously fascinating world. As
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Hartmann promises at the beginning of his Ethics, For to [new ethics]

the
world which [it] will open is once more great, as a whole
and in its smallest part, and is filled with treasure,
unexhausted and inexhaustible.3
Philosophy as a whole, ontology and epistemology,
ethics and aesthetics, is the analysis of wonder and the
relearning of how to appreciate the miracle of
existence. Or, we can now also say, it is a rediscovery of
reality. According to Hartmann, philosophy consists in
allowing reality to show itself, rather
3
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CritiqueofMoralism
121
than be forced into our intellectual and moral

constructs.
Justification,
evidence,
proofs,
and
rationalization have become more important than truth
in the Western philosophical tradition. The focus of
Hartmanns philosophy shifts back to truth and the
grasp of what is, whether by rational or irrational
means. He redirects us from an attempt to capture the
real into our rational nets to the appreciation of how
much in the real world is wonder-full.
This world of wonder, filled with treasure,
unexhausted and inexhaustible, is not a world without
bewildering conficts and unsolvable antinomies. Nor is
it a world without evil and ugliness, injustice, and
disproportion. In fact, what can make this world appear
unjust and disproportionate to the highest degree are
our expectations of a reality without conficts and
struggle.
Hartmann shows that, just as there is one step from
the great to tragic, it takes only one slip from the
sublime to ridiculous. The pretention of greatness is
the highest and the most comprehensive. This
pretention is the easiest one to fail and the possibility
of making a slip is the greatest.4
A fall from the greatest and the sublime happens so
often that it is easy to sink into pessimism,
resignation, or indiference. In Hartmanns judgment,
Not only is modern man restless and precipitate,
dulled and blas, but nothing inspires, touches,
lays hold on his innermost being. Finally he has
only an ironical and weary smile for everything.
Yes, in the end he makes a virtue of his moral
degradation. He elevates the nil admirari, his
incapacity to feel wonder, amazement, enthusiasm
and reverence, into a planned habit of life .. . . This
morbid condition is typical. It does not appear
today for the first time in history. But whenever it
has made its appearance, it has been a symptom of
weakness and decadence, of inward failure and
general pessimism.5
From the nimbus of the sublime, which ascribes the

aura of splendor to something that does not deserve it,
we sink into pessimism that ironically laughs at
everything great and sublime. From having ideals not
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corresponding to reality, we come to having no ideals at

all.
Is there any solution for this rollercoaster, which
continues to run throughout the history of the human
race? How can we attempt to coordinate the real in
the light of the ideal, when the ideal itself is so
problematic?
4
5

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Part III
Personality
The world is not ordered toward man, but he is ordered toward the
world.
Hartmann
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III.1
The Realm of Real Being and the

Realm of Values
Jaspers argues that, The depth of philosophical thinking is disclosed

by the way in which it mediates between the oppositions it sets up.1 The
central opposition in Hartmanns philosophical opus is that between the
realm of real being and the realm of values. He does not allow the chasm
between them to become insurmountable; after all, values are also beings,
ideal rather than real. Nevertheless, the tension between the two persists.
The fact that Hartmann never dedicates any work to the resolution of this
tension, only contributes to it. Despite being the most systematic of all
twentieth-century philosophers, Hartmann never shows in detail how to
establish a bridge between these two realms. He never creates a mosaic
providing an overview of his entire work, a key to understanding his
philosophy.
Despite this deficiency, it is clear that mediation between the two realms
is accomplished in human beings only insofar as they are considered
persons. Now it is up to us to piece together this mosaic, as much as we
can, by scrounging through his opus, specifically Ethics, Aesthetics, The
Problem of Spiritual Being, On the Foundations of Ontology, and New
Ways ofOntology.2
The nature of personality is a topic of great significance for us. We
live in a time of disturbing moral and spiritual decline, when the sense
of human personality and dignity are obscured and we seem to swing
from the wildest enthusiasm to utter despair. If philosophy can help us
understand what personality is and delineate the legitimate aspirations and
unavoidable restraints of persons, then philosophy may play a major role in
1
Karl Jaspers, Descartes and Philosophy, in Three Essays: Leonardo, Descartes,

Weber, trans. R. Manheim (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 105.
For Hartmanns description of his own philosophical opus, see Systematische
Philosophie in eigener Darstellung, in Deutsche systematische Philosophie nach
ihrenGestaltern, ed. Schwarz Hermann (Berlin: Junker und Dnnhaupt, 1931), Vol. I,
45471.
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our orientation in reality. Let us briefly reconstruct how we came into this
impasse, and carefully consider what we can learn from Hartmann about
the nature and value of personality.
The modern turn toward the subject made things easier only on the
surface. It developed from Descartes and Lockes understanding of human
beings in terms of the split between mental and material substances.
The dubious ontology of substances was virtually rejected after Humes
skepticism and Kants transcendental turn. As often happens when a
well-entrenched view is repudiated, understanding the nature of human
personality in positive terms becomes increasingly problematic: Should we
understand it as Kants rational moral agent? Hegels spirit? Hussers
transcendental ego? Heideggers Dasein? Schelers person?
Scheler offers an appropriate diagnosis of both the spirit of the age and
the state of philosophy when he professes: Man is more of a problem to
himself at the present time than ever before in all recorded history.3
Hartmann is unimpressed by the profusion of various anthropological
and existentialist attempts to come to terms with this problem. Those
random and disconnected approaches treat man as if he were some kind
of uprooted and isolated being, with an unlimited capacity for shaping his
own destiny and recreating the creation in his own image. In Hartmanns
uncompromising judgment, these attempts are nothing but the expression
of an anthropocentric megalomania.4
Hartmanns view is based on the following crucial insight: the position
and role of man in the cosmos can only be securely delineated if
approached through careful analysis of the ontological and the
axiological realms. He is aware that the difficulties we encounter in
dealing with the mutual relationship of ontology and axiology are not
negligible. If ontology is superior to axiology, then we do violence to the
nature of values and virtually eliminate the possibility of freedom; in the
ontologically determined world, man becomes a speck of dust, an
ephemeral, negligible phenomenon. If, by contrast, axiology is dominant
over ontology, the whole natural basis of the world and of humanity is
ignored, and the problem of freedom seems equally unsolvable. In the
teleologically determined world, all reality from the beginning to the end
must conform to some predetermined valuational
Max Scheler, Mans Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (New York: Noonday
Press, 1979), 4. For the philosophical climate in the 1920s, see Peter E. Gordon,
Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2010).
4
See Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 17e [I, 243]. See also Ethik, ch. 21c [I, 2889], Hartmanns
review of the development of anthropology in German Philosophy in the Last Ten
Years, and Hartmann, TeleologischesDenken, ch. 13c, 1302.
3
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127
principles and mans action is thus superfluous. Indeed, the very existence
of man is superfluous, for the values prevail and determine reality with or
without mans consciousness of it.
Ontology and axiology cover two aspects of being that have different
yet complementary roles. Real being grounds everything there is, and
therefore plays an important role in understanding the nature and
position of man in the universe. Ideal being enables the possibility of
meaning through the actualization of values in real being. Man stands
at the crossroads of real and ideal being; he mediates between the two
realms. His role and his destiny are framed in this mediating role,
balancing the firm ground below and the starry heavens above. This
mediating position gives neither ontological priority to axiology nor
primacy to practical reason. All that it really justifies is an axiological
primacy of the ideal sphere, in contrast to the ontological primacy of
the real sphere.5
As a natural being, man is subject to ontological determinations. These
determinations, thorough as they are, nevertheless allow novelty at every
higher stratum. The categorial dependency of the higher on the lower
strata does not preclude the possibility of new elements on a higher level.
Thus, a conscious subject can become a spiritual being (or a person). This
ontological insight is critical to Hartmann; although a person can never be
reduced to a conscious subject, there can be no personality that is also not
a conscious subject.
Surprisingly, this fundamental realization was forgotten or overlooked
by Scheler, who otherwise praises the results of Hartmans ontology.
Carried on the wings of his extraordinary mind, Scheler violates it not
only when he argues that persons cannot be conceived as objects, but even
more so when he speaks of God as a person.
Hartman vehemently opposes any attempt to personify God. Making
a definitive statement about God is claiming to know what can never be
an object of definitive thought; speaking of God in this way is assuming
familiarity with that what is most unknown and most impenetrable.
It is no less problematic to speak of God as a person. Like Kant (in the
Transcendental Dialectic of his Critique of Pure Reason), Hartmann
maintains that we have no cognitive grounds either to affirm or to deny the
possibility of God as a person. What we can know is that the postulation
of God as a person (who at the same time is not a subject) violates the
ontological laws: Personality exists only on a basis of subjectivity, just as
5
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 17e [I, 243]. See Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, chs. 4,
11; and DasProblemdesgeistigenSeins, ch. 14f, 15961.
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subjectivity exists only on a basis of organic life, and life only on a basis
of the whole subordinate uniformity of nature.6
Let us assume that such an ontological determination holds and look at
the nature of personality from the opposite direction. What kind of novelty
does personality represent in comparison to a subject? Hartmann relates
personality to the highest strata of spiritual being. Recall that according to
his ontology not every spiritual beingisaperson: theso-called objective
spirit and the objectified spirit are not persons. Only individual, living
beings can be persons. Speaking in the context of moral values,
Hartmann maintains that, of all real entities, only a moral subject can
stand enraptured with the ideal world of values. He is also the only real
entity that has the capacity to communicate these values to a reality that
does not incorporate them. A person is only the subject who can, in this
way, bring the ontological and the axiological realms together.
Thus, there is a double determination that alone allows a subject
to become a person, an ontological determination from below and an
axiological determination from above:
A personal being is metaphysically possible only at a boundary line
between ideal and real determinationthat is, at the point of their
reciprocal impact, their opposition and their union, only at the
connecting point of two worlds, the ontological and the axiological.
The intermediate position between the two, the non-merging of either
into the other, as well as participation in both, is the condition of
personality.7
Hartmann insists that our usual intellectualistic and moralistic approaches

misrepresent the position of personality between the two realms. The mere
intellectual discernment of values is not sufficient. Without our acting on
the proper insight and living in accordance with it, mere knowledge of
values remains impotent. What is more, the very possibility of knowledge
of values itself is impossible without a prior orientation, which rests upon
a more fundamental inner attitude that guides the comprehension and
selection of values.
Merely choosing and acting are also not constitutive of personality.
The expression freedom of the will is too narrow and does not reflect
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 24d [I, 326]. For further discussion of God and religion in
relation to ethics, see Hartmanns outstanding closing chapter of Ethik, ch. 85 [III,
26074].
7
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 19g [I, 268].
6
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129
prior commitment and inner attitude that lead to selections and actions.
Freedom of the will scratches the surface of the moral life. It plays
a constitutive role only in the ethics narrowly focused on the ought to
do and the relationship of means and ends. Hartmanns distinction
between ought to be and ought to do points toward more fundamental
dispositions and capacities needed before we reach the level of choosing
and acting.
There are two related but different elements that constitute the
personality: freedom in the more fundamental sense and the carrying of
moral values. Instead of freedom of the will, Hartmann prefers to talk
about moral freedom: a personal entity is a free entity. Values do not coerce
the person. Even when they are comprehended, they impose a claim on a
person that leaves him free to address the values in accordance with his
inner constitution, attitudes, intentions, and the context in which he finds
himself. Of decisive significance is that the value of intention (or moral
freedom) is distinguished from the intended value (which he associates
with the freedom of the will). Only the former makes the person a carrier
of moral values.
Like Kant, Hartmann considers a person to be a citizen of two worlds.
For him, they are not the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds. They are
the realms of real and ideal being, which intertwine and influence each
other through him: The life of a person is a single unbroken chain of
situations in which he must find his way.8 This single unbroken chain is
the inner pole of personality, the unity of a persons manifold and
changeable commitments. These commitments are tested and the persons
character is revealed through his activity, suffering, moral strength,
freedom of the will, foresight, and purposive efficiency. Behind all these
various manifestations we find the inner core, the self-synthesis that is,
at the same time, continuously self-transcending as well. How this is all
done, we can neither fully comprehend nor rationally explain. We only
know that, as a unity of commitments, personality gives expression to the
virtually inexhaustible complexity of mans being.
Hartmann, DasProblemdesgeistigenSeins, ch. 12b, 133. For further discussion, see

ch. 14f, 15961 of the same work, and Ethik, ch. 78c [III, 1778].
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III. 2
Personality as a Value
One of Hartmanns central intentions in regard to personality is to

establish its ontological rootedness in the life cycle. His objective goes
even further, for there is a double-bind on personality: not just the
rootedness in the real world, but also a fundamental orientation toward
the realm of values. Personality is the mediator between the two worlds.
Is personality itself also something valuable?
This depends on many factors, the central of which we will discuss later.
First, we must make some preparatory considerations.
According to Hartmanns careful delineation of the realms of real and
ideal being, no real entity need be valuable by itself; being does not imply
value. It is different when a real entity is an actualization of an ideal being.
The reality of a (positive) value is itself a value. This is not the end of the
story, however, because the nonreality of a value can also be valuable. It
can be valuable insofar as it stimulates us to live in a way that will bring us
closer to the realization of that value. Let us clarify these views by turning
once more to Kant.
Kants consideration of personality falls within the framework of
modern philosophy, yet it also has its peculiar characteristics. Following a
broadly Christian tradition, Kant accepts the fundamental dualism in
human nature and associates the seat of personality with the soul, not
with the body. Under the influence of Descartes, the focus narrows from
the soul to the mind, and many modern philosophers base ethics on the
philosophy of mind. In accordance with the modern preoccupation with
the mind, Kants understanding of personality can be linked with the
transcendental unity of apperception, or the unity of all theoretical
and/or practical activity. Perhaps, most importantly of all, it can be
understood in terms of moral autonomy.
We have already indicated in the previous section why a nave dualism
of the body and the soul would not work, and also why freedom of the will
(and thereby autonomy) must be grounded in deeper dispositions and
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capacities. Kant answers the second of these concerns in his late work,
ReligionwithintheLimitsofReasonAlone. Here he discusses the concept
of personality in the context of his consideration of several predispositions.
(The term predisposition [Anlage] is Kants way of talking about basic
human nature as it is prior to any actual exercise of freedom and
autonomy.) The three original predispositions are those of animality,
humanity, and personality. For Kant these predispositions correspond to:
(i) physical love that provides for the preservation of the species; (ii)
self-love that is both physical and rational, producing the inclination to
acquire worth in the opinion of others; and (iii) the capacity for
respect for the moral law, as sufficient incentive for the will.1
Kant does not have much admiration for animality: Life as such . . .
has no intrinsic value at all . . . it has value only as regards the use to
which we put it, the ends to which we direct it.2 Is it, then, humanity that
deserves our respect? Or should we reserve this respect for personality
only? This issue is not clearly resolved in Kants philosophy. It is only
clear that humanity is a precondition for personality, or the state of
morality, for Kant. Humanity in itself is not necessarily an actual moral
state, but is at least required for its possibility. This possibility seems
sufficient to assign to human beings what Kant considers as an
absolute value: the value of dignity and autonomy.
If we choose to believe Kant, then our lives are transformed from no
value at all (in the case of sheer animality) into something of absolute
values (insofar as we are moral beings). In what exactly does this magical
transformative value consist? Kant formulates his ideas regarding the value
of human beings (as moral beings) in different ways. Most of them seem to
converge to one critical point: respect for the moral law. In Lewis White
Becks formulation:
Personality . . . is an Idea of reason, and personality is not given. We
are persons, but no finite sensuous being is fully adequate to the Idea
of personality. In human nature, considered empirically, we find at
most only a predisposition for personality, which is the capacity for
respecting the moral law and making it sufficient incentive for the
will.3
2
3
Immanuel Kant, ReligionwithintheLimitsofReasonAlone, trans. T. Greene and H.

H. Hudson (LaSalle, IN: Open Court, 1960), 223.
Kant, AnthropologyfromaPragmaticPointofView, sec. 66.
Lewis White Beck, ACommentaryonKantsCritiqueofPracticalReason
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 227.
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Kant interprets the notion of personality as an Idea of reason in the

following way: morality conceives of the world that does not yet exist in
nature and seeks to actualize it by acting in the given world according
to the laws of the possible one. In Kants words, [the moral] law gives to
the sensible world . . . the form of an intelligible world, that is, the form
of supersensuous nature, without interfering with the mechanism of the
former.4
Hartmann could accept this view, not in terms of two parallel worlds,
but in terms of their integration in the actual human being, which
preserves both ontological and axiological determinations. Yet, Hartmann
is unsatisfied with Kants shift toward respect for the moral law. In Kants
words: All respect for a person is properly only respect for the law . . . of
which the person provides an example.5 Hartmann does not understand
how this respect applies to any person: How we can show this respect to
another person?
Kants short answer is that the fundamental moral equality of all
persons requires that they must all be treated in the same way. To
Hartmann, this raises more questions than it provides answers: If
respect is something other persons do not have to earn (simply because
they are rational beings and moral agents), does that turn respect into a
moral obligation? Must other persons always be respected? Must all
persons always be respected? Must all persons be treated with equal
respect, or is there a difference in the degree of respect? Must each
person, in order to be respected, be treated in the same way? How about
individual differences between persons? Or their actual behavior? Or
the circumstances under which they act? Are they all irrelevant?
Hartmann pursues these questions more persistently than anyone
else. He also comes up with some ingenious remarks worth mentioning
here. While considering Kants treatment of persons in terms of the first
formulation of the categorical imperative, he points out that,
[T]here is evidently something here which in principle man as a
personality cannot will. Rather he must at the same time will that over
and above all universal applicability there should be in his conduct
something of his own, which no other in his position ought to do or
need do. If he neglects this, he is a mere numeral in the crowd and
Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPractical Reason, trans. L. W. Beck (Indianapolis, IN:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 44.
Immanuel Kant, Groundingof theMetaphysicsofMorals, trans. J. Ellington
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1974), 14n.
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could be replaced by anyone else; his personal existence is futile and

meaningless.6
In Hartmanns opinion, Kants conception of moral equality levels out all

individual differences and qualities. This conclusion would run contrary to
both our intuitions and to Kants own intentions. First, if morality were to
consist in nothing but the carrying out of a few general moral precepts or
laws, then personal uniqueness, which always attempts something beyond
such general precepts, would be utterly immoral. Instead of a genuine
moral community, we would wind up having something similar to the
world envisioned in Dostoevskys Grand Inquisitor. More than one
totalitarian regime attempted to implement this vision in the twentieth
century, and the results are all too familiar.
Second, Hartmann believes that this one-sided interpretation of the
moral law would run contrary to Kants vision of the categorical
imperative. He does not believe that Kant intends to de-personalize and
de-humanize the world; just the opposite. This is why Hartmann believes
that Kants law should say: So act, that the maxim of your will could
never become the principle of a universal legislation without a reminder.
Alternatively, we can express it in this way: Never act merely according
to a system of universal values but always at the same time in accordance
with the individual values of your own personal nature.7
There is clearly a conflict here. From Hartmanns statement, which is in
the spirit of Kant, an antinomy arises that cannot fully be removed.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this whole issue is that Hartmann
does not believe that this antinomy creates any essential problem for
Kants account of persons and respect for the moral law. On the contrary,
it complements Kants account and makes it richer.
Here is how Hartmann comes to his conclusion. The real demand of
Kants categorical imperative is:
I ought so to will, as under literally the same circumstances everyone
else ought to will. But literally the same circumstances includes the
peculiar nature of my individual ethos. The imperative, accordingly,
when the complete structure of the case is born in mind, not only
6
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57h [II, 357]. Scheler raises a similar criticism: There can be
no respect for a norm or a moral law which is not based on respect for a person who
posits itand ultimately is founded on love for the person as a model; Formalismin
Ethics, 560.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57h [II, 357]. For further discussion, see a very important
ch. 80 [III, 180201] of Ethik.
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135
excludes the moral justification of a will exactly the same in others, but
it positively demands also the unique factor in my own will, without
prejudice to the classification which brings my will and that of others
under a rude uniformity of the ought. The ought allows unlimited
scope for an individually articulated will.8
Hartmann concludes that individuality cannot and should not be excluded

from moral considerations; nor can or should it be excluded from the
proper understanding of what it means to be a person and how to show
respect for other persons. The demands of the universal and personal must
not clash because they operate on different levels. Morality is not based
on a narrow, one-dimensional order of moral values, to be discerned by
our deliberate reflection. Hartmann has three objections against such a
conception of morality. First, the bounds of our deliberate reflection are
surprisingly narrow. As our perception of the external world depends on
a variety of emotional and intuitive elements, our sense of values depends
not only on deliberate reflection but also on the individual and, for the most
part, unconscious feeling of values. Second, our conscious and
unconscious sensing of values is never complete. At most, at any given
moment we can discern some fragments of the realms of values. Third,
there is no definitive order or rank of values. We do not know how many
of them may exist, but we are aware of only two such orders: one
according to which values can be ordered from the strongest to the
weakest, and the other that ranks them from the highest to the lowest.
The values promoted by general lawsthe values of equality, justice, and
similarbelong to the strongest and lowest values. The values unique to
individuals are, by contrast, the highest and the weakest.
What remains puzzling is how these two orders of values are to be
unified together in every concrete situation. No recipe can provide
a general once-and-for-all-solution for their unification. Hartmann
frequently reminds us that, moral life is life in the midst of conflicts.
In other words, moral life is concentration upon them, a constructive
solution of them through the commitment of the person; and all ignoring
of it is a sin, an irrevocable injury to an ethical beingeven to that of
ones own personality.9
The value of personality is complex and two-sided. The two sides
involve universality and individuality in a way that is peculiar for the
nature of personality. On the one hand, the value of personality is
subjectively
8
9
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57h [II, 359].

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universal: it is valid for every subject that grasps values, although not
every subject does. On the other hand, the value of personality is
objectively individual: like aesthetic values, it is always a value of one
single individual. Again, like aesthetic values, the value of personality is
nevertheless a value that is objectively valid for anyone who grasps its
unique meaning.
Hartmann has two more insights in connection with the nature of
the value of personality. The more obvious of them is that the value of
personality is independent of its actualization (or realization); like all
other values, the value of personality has its ideal existence. The second
and more important insight is that the value of personality is not attainable
in the pursuit of itself, but only in the pursuit of other values. Next we will
consider why this is so, and how exactly the value of personality can be
realized.
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III. 3
Pseudo, Spurious, and Genuine

Personality
When discussing the nature and value of personality, Hartmann often

adheres to Max Schelers views, which we will briefly examine, so that we
may better understand Hartmanns own contribution to the subject.
For Scheler, the person is a concrete unity of acts of different types and
nature. The person is present in all such acts, but cannot be reduced to any
of them. The key question is not whata person is but whoa person is. The
answer to the second question can only be found through value insights,
that is, by immediately and directly taking in the persons actions and
lifestyle. Since an individual person is inseparable from his community
and society, Scheler believes that we can only know him in the context
of his larger cultural milieu. He opposes the Locke-inspired liberal
individualism, in which all interpersonal relations are regarded as
contractual and artificial. They are the relations formed for the benefit
and interest of the so-called free and independent individuals. Private
property is what separates: what is mine is not yours, and the other way
around. Scheler holds that, while modern society is based on separation
and distrust, a genuine human community is based on trust and mutual
support. This is why, coupled with the rise of capitalism and the
mechanization of nature, liberal individualism leads to the transformation
of all forms of community into society. To counter this harmful trend of
modern world, Scheler emphasizes love, as well as the relevance of
certain communal units, such as nation, state, cultural circle, and,
ultimately, humanity. In his view, the concept of personality is the
culminating point that reminds us how deep and central the triangular
nexus of individuality, community, and morality is.
Because Schelers entire ethical system is centered on his conception
of what it means to be a person, Hartmann calls it the ethics of moral
personalism. Despite his admiration for Scheler, he opposes this
unjustified broadening of the concept of personality. Ascribing personality
to higher social units is mistaken not only on ontological but also on
axiological grounds. Individual inequality cuts deeper into the essence of
a person than universal equality, defended by various higher social
units. What is more
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important to Hartmann, no community is ever the carrier of full humanity.

An individual is.
Hartmann had been appalled by two related phenomena that were
clearly noticeable in the twentieth century: the dominance of social
ethics, combined with the readiness of individuals to lose themselves
in a mass of people. In Hartmanns lifetime, the state (and political
institutions in general) assumed the role and authority over individuals
and seduced them to take up various forms of intolerance and cruelty
that, in its range and scale of destruction, outdid any other in the history
of humanity. In our time, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it
is financial institutions and big corporations that have usurped the role of
personalities and their power to dictate their own inhumane conditions
to the rest of the world.
Hartmann categorically rejects this pseudo-personalization of higher
social units, as well as their abuses and irresponsibility. He is equally
disgusted by the readiness with which the masses of people give up their
individual personalities and merge themselves into the form of one mass
movement or another.
The massive loss of individuality, and how readily it occurs, prompts a
number of intellectuals, Scheler included, to discuss authentic personality
and offer various classifications of persons. Following his own hierarchical
order of values into the values of the holy, spiritual values, vital values,
utility values, and pleasure values, Scheler articulates the corresponding
types of persons: the saint, the genius, the hero, the leading spirit of
civilization, and the artist of enjoyment.
Hartmann is not interested in such typologies. Personality is not
only different in each individual, but ought to be different: The specific
direction of his nature actually exists only once, and only in him. In him
the individual ethos entrenches itself upon the universal ethos.1
The various types stand in the middle, between the individual and
the universal. Hartmann advocates for the uniqueness of the valuational
direction of every person, which gives him the right to pursue his own
way and go beyond the mere type. This pursuit is both beneficial and
harmful. It is the beneficial because it allows the person to develop a
unique valuation direction, to pursue a complex of values specifically
related to his own person, to his own character and predispositions. This
orientation is harmful because it can be pursued only in a limited range of
values; every positive choice of values means at the same time an
inevitable neglect of the whole range of values that have not been selected.
1
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139
Hartmann also neglects the typology of persons because the majority

of people have little personalitythey differ from a type only slightly.
And yet, the strict sense of personality applies solely to the uniqueness
and differentiation of that valuational complex that constitutes in a mans
ethos the preferential trend of his inner disposition. Only through such a
trend does a man really rise above the ought to be that applies to
everyone.2
Hartmann does not imply heroes either in Schelers narrow sense of
the word, or in a broader, generally accepted sense, when he speaks about
a developed individual personality. Usually, hero is simply a more extreme
expression of a general type of person. Hartmann does not believe that
genuine personality is to be looked for among famous persons. The essence
and true significance of personality consist in inner greatness.
Personality increases or decreases depending on the amount of
individuality (ranging from the typical to the highly unique), and the
degree of approximation of the actual person to his ideal ethos. We
constantly look at rich and famous as the exemplary models of
personalities because the first of these two aspects appears to be more
important to us than the second. We judge persons by the criteria
imposed upon them from the outside, which measure certain personal
traits against others, whether average or exceptional in some ways. A
person is not genuine, however, because he is better or more successful
than others according to an arbitrarily and externally determined
standard. He is genuine owing to his ability to approximate his ideal
ethos. This does not exclude the first aspect (the amount of
individuality), because Hartmann thinks that both are relevant to a
genuine personality:
Whoever is really a marked personality, carries his standards beyond
all questions in himself; in following them he is loyal to himself. He
shows very definite and unmistakable sympathies and antipathies, for
which he can give no other account than that which is to be found in
their existence and their felt necessity. He sees the world, in a light of
his own, as no one else sees it, in the light of his preferred values;
and lives in accord with them. He is a world for himself, in the true
sense of the word.3
Here we encounter another paradox, which further illuminates the

difference between spurious and genuine personality. All of us need to
develop our personality; all of us have to attempt to realize our ideal ethos
2
3

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to the greatest possible degree. Yet, a self-conscious attempt to become a

genuine personality almost certainly prevents us from developing it. There
can be no specific ought to do regarding the development of personality.
Further, there should be little conscious effort to initiate this development.
Personality . . . as a value is never by its very nature actualized in
reflection upon itself, but in reflection upon other values.4 There cannot
be a conscious imitation of another genuine personality. One who merely
copies is not a personality. Rather, he is a destroyer and falsifier of his
own true personal ideal. He is not a man, but a human ape.
The paradox is that, while it is a definitive ideal to develop ones
personality and a sin not to do so, this development can be neither
deliberate nor based on imitation. There cannot be a rational formula for
how one goes about developing ones own personality; the value of
personality cannot be understood explicitly, because it is essentially
irrational. Ones personality can be developed only by following ones
own feeling of value and aprioristic insight. To prevent an overly Platonic
interpretation of his view, Hartmann warns us not to forget that our a
priori discernment of values and of our individual ideal is never
unconnected to our experience of the actual, and can succeed only when
connected to it. The actuality experienced is the occasion that incites the
mind to the beholding of values and ideals.
Hartmann stops his discussion of the value of personality abruptly
in order to consider personal love, which we have covered (see II.4). The
continuation of his thought on personality is in the chapter on wisdom.
This is not accidental: wisdom is an art of living, and developing a
genuine personality certainly requires an art of living. With the intention
of continuing this discussion, we will turn to Hartmanns thoughts on
wisdom.
Throughout his opus, Hartmann criticizes the exaggerations of
intellectualism and moralism. He carries this elegantly out in his chapter
on wisdom, where he states that wisdom is something that has been
repeatedly obscured in one or both of these ways.
Going against Aristotles overly intellectualistic interpretation of
wisdom as dianoetic virtue, Hartmann points out that wisdom has only
peripheral contact with the intellectual values of insight, truth, and
knowledge. Aristotle brings wisdom too close to contemplative selfindulgence and unpractical remoteness from the world. In contrast,
Hartmann insists that wisdom must be in complete accord with the world,
because it is the sense of everything that contains value.
4
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57i [II, 362]. This attitude is similar to Hartmanns distinction
between intentiorectaand intentioobliqua.
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141
Nor should wisdom be interpreted moralistically, as in the example

of prudence. Taken by itself, prudence is nothing more than worldly
shrewdness. In contrast, wisdom has to do with our fundamental moral
commitment. Wisdom is a primal moral disposition, a commitment of a
person to the richness of life in general, including his own and the lives of
others.
This conception is far-off from anything we read about wisdom in
textbooks of philosophy. In fact, it has nothing in particular to do with
philosophy in any narrow, technical sense of the word. It concerns our
overall orientation toward life. Hartmann believes that his interpretation
is not a deviation but a return to the original meaning of wisdom in the
early Greek and Roman traditions. In Latin, is rendered as
sapientia, which, again, should not be interpreted in any intellectualistic or
moralistic way. Sapientia is moral taste: a capacity directed toward
fullness of life and an affirming, evaluating attitude toward whatever is
of value.5 Wisdom is nothing but ethical spirituality, the attitude of the
ethos as the ultimate spiritual factor in humanity, dominating the whole
life.6
To those familiar with Hartmanns ontological works alone, this
conception of wisdom may seem surprising, even strange. This impression
can be justified only through a limited acquaintance with his philosophy.
Despite the occasional impressions on the contrary, Hartmann is not an
analytic philosopher and he never aims to turn philosophy into an imitation
of science. He is also not a continental philosopher, especially in terms
of the existentialists obsession with death. Hartmann is a philosopher
preoccupied with life, with the richness and fullness of life, with its beauty
and sublimity. He understands philosophy as the analysis of wonder, as the
rational penetration into the miracle of existence, with all of its nuances
and complexities. This, he thinks, is the authentic conception of philosophy
that we find exemplified in the pre-Socratics and especially in the first
true master of philosophy, Socrates. The Socratic ideal of examined life is
what guides Hartmann in his overall philosophical endeavor, as well as his
attempt to understand the development of personality and the nature of
wisdom.
According to Hartmann, Socratic self-knowledge is the first fruit of this
spiritual attitude toward life that we call wisdom:
Itsignifiesknowledge exactly at that pointwhere it is most difficult,
where all our natural tendencies check objectivity of knowledge
knowledge
5
6

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of ones own ethical non-being, failure and shortcoming. The ethical

import of this knowledge can be measured by the value of that which
it brings with it, the right appreciation of the moral life which is
demanded, the appreciation of what a man ought to be.7
In this sense (and in this sense alone), the Socratic connection between
virtue and knowledge can be justified. It should not, however, lead toward
an exaggerated identification of virtue with knowledge. No insight into the
nature of the good is sufficient to make a person good, for in a genuine
personality any such insight must be reinforced by volition, determination,
active energy, and self-mastery.
Wisdom lies in the same direction as goodness, but they do not
coincide. Plato understands the Socratic wisdom in the right way when he
points out the domination of values in their ideality (as Ideas). Wisdom
and virtue are inseparably connected to the beholding of Ideas in such a
way that a person beholding them sees in their light everything that he
encounters and all his endeavors in life.
The wise man carries into all the relations of life the standards of
value which he possesses in his spiritual taste, he saturates his
outlook upon life with them. This domination of values does not
come to him by way of reflection, or through knowledge of
commandments, but is an immediate, intuitive, emotionally toned
domination, which from the centre of moral perception penetrates
all unobserved and impulsive excitations, and is there already alive
in them.8
How different is this from any typology of persons and our usual ideas
of heroes and great men! How different is this from all intellectualistic
and moralistic attempts to force upon us their conceptual schemes and
moral precepts! Everything in Hartmanns description sounds simple and
natural, just as it seems when we imagine the historical Socrates in his
usual dialogical encounters. Wisdom is that core of personality, its
unifying and valuational principle that colors everything a person
observes and does. To become a genuine personality is to become wise in
this original, Socratic sense. As Hartmann articulates it,
For the wise man the intuitive grasping of the situation is in part
determined by this wider perspective, by that of the Idea. The
7
8
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 45b [II, 240].

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understanding of the significance of a situation depends upon the

perspective in which it is seen. The larger the perspective, the deeper
the insight into the situation. Ethical divination is the bestowal of
meaning. For at bottom it is the living sense of valuebut obscure,
foreboding, not yet clear as to content. With a thousand tentacles
the wise man reaches out beyond himself and his own limited
understanding; he does not live in what he already knows of
himself, but always a span beyond. This is the strict meaning of
sapientia.9
This, we can add, is also the precise meaning of genuine personality.
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III. 4
Fulfillment of Personality
The time has come to tie together some of the loose

ends of Hartmanns philosophy, for which Hartmann
himself is responsible, having abandoned the big
picture in favor of focusing on finer points. These loose
ends include Hartmanns ideas of personality, personal
love, radiant virtue, wisdom, the richness of experience
and moral sublimity, and they are all connected in his
idea of the fulfillment of personality.
Hartmanns new ontology explains the embodiment
of personality in the ontological world. In connection
with his axiology, it ofers a new understanding of the
unique richness and depth of human personality that
emerges as a manifestation of its real, although
limited, novelty and autonomy. Grounded in the strata
of real being and positioned at the spiritual level of
that structure, a human person is the only being
capable of responding to the world in a way that brings
about the realization of values and bestows meaning.
Hartmanns ontologically and axiologically structured
world is the
cosmos of virtually inexhaustible
complexity, richness, and depth. The human person is
the mediator between the two realms of being, an
imperfect intermediary who in this process can be
creative or not, autonomous or not. However, he is also
more than just a mediator. Personality is a value or, to
express it diferently, a task. As a value, personality is
not something given but has to be realized and fulfilled.
Hartmann has no democratic illusion that every
human being eventually develops his personality. He
argues, nevertheless, that the longing for personal
fulfillment is one of mans most intense impulses. He
adds that, the mystery of love is that it satisfies this
deepest and least understood craving.1
What Hartmann has in mind is personal love, which
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he puts on the highest pedestal. The value of personal

love is complementary to personality, which Hartmann
describes in almost poetic terms. He speaks of it as
the divination of the Ideal of a particular individual.
Hartmann ties the
1
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penetrating glance and intuitive knowledge of love with

seeing the perfect in the imperfect and the infinite
in the finite.
What takes place here is [simply] marvelous. The
intuitive glance forces its way, as it were, through
the actual personality, it breaks through the
boundaries of the empirical man and beholds
something diferent, which in the man himself is
only intimated. To the intuitive glance the
personality is transparent. But what shines through
it is its ideal essence, its true ethos, the value
which is its inner destiny, its intelligible character.2
Another way to think about the fulfillment of

personality through love is to point out that in our
nature there is a need to be loved. This is a genuine
need, perhaps our deepest need, especially in view of
the urge to give and bestow love and help another
human being fulfill his own most primordial longing.
Is (personal) love then all you need?
While Hartmanns text may appear to suggest this, we
should be cautious about this conclusion. Throughout
his writings, Hartmann warns of the danger of onesidedness and a need for synthesis and
complementarity. Values are no exception to this rule.
In one typical passage Hartmann reproaches
Nietzsches one-sided criticism of Christianitys
brotherly love:
He rightly saw that love of the far distant is the
higher moral value. Yet he was at the same time
wrong; for brotherly love is the stronger value. The
mistake of Christianity is the belief that the
fulfillment of the moral life depends upon brotherly
love alone. Nietzsches mistake is to suppose that
love of the far distant is possible without a basis in
brotherly love, that its aims are in themselves
suficient. Only in their synthesis is to be found the
reciprocal content of both ideals. But to discern the
synthesis is a task of far greater magnitude than to
attach oneself to the one side and despise the other.3
When emphasizing the relevance of personal love,

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Hartmann may sound as one-sided about the subject as

Christianity and Nietzsche. To his credit, his text
permits the possibility of a diferent reading. For
instance, in the last sentence of the chapter on
personal love, he writes: Thus personal love, like
radiant virtue, gives an ultimate meaning to life; it is
already
2
3
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57k [II, 366].

Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 63i [II, 463].
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FulfillmentofPersonality
147
fulfillment in germ, an uttermost value of selfhood, a

bestowal of import upon human existence useless,
like every genuine self-subsistent value, but a splendor
shed upon our path.4
Radiant virtue now enters into the same picture as
personal love. It is a bestowing virtue, a giving form of
love, sometimes described similarly to personal love.
Hartmann maintains, for instance, that radiant virtue
is a power of the ethos, it instills the Ideal into the
race. As in the case of personal love, here the real
anticipates the Ideal, a living proof that the Ideal is
possible in the world of actuality.5
A large part of our trouble with radiant virtue is its
name. We do not immediately see how it connects to
love, and Hartmann does not provide suficient
indication that it is closely related to wisdom. Yet,
radiant virtue is a form of love, directed from inside out,
but not at any one human being in particular. Like the
sun, the person of radiant virtue shines with love and
the appreciation of life, with the light that spreads to
others and enriches their lives.
It is certainly worthy to note that Hartmann refers
to Socrates as the exemplification of these virtues in
the chapters on radiant virtue and wisdom. In both
cases, the carrier of virtue is described as the born
friend, the spiritual helper, the moral leader, and
the educator. He educates others that the highest
value of life is inevitably a spending of life.6
On the topic of wisdom, Hartmann points to an
underlying intelligent optimism of a wise man and
the attitude of appreciation in the presence of
inexhaustible riches in life. Like radiant virtue and
personal love, wisdom is by no means exhausted in
right action. Its essence is the right disposition, the
right attitude: Calmness and clearness of vision, a
loving recognition of the individuality and intrinsic
merit of others, are the extreme opposite of the hunt
for happiness, and therefore of any sort of eudemonism
proper.7 In the case of the wise man, we sense the
tendency to be independent of external goods and a
grasp of reality guided by the sense of highest values.
Also, we sense pure joy in everything that is worthy of
joy, together with a deep sentiment of gratitude and a
profound sense of reverential wonder at the richness of
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life.
What Hartmann means when he talks about radiant
virtue and wisdom is love of the world. Likely he
avoids this phrase because it plays a prominent role in
Schelers philosophy, although Scheler interprets it in
4
5
6
7
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
Ethik, ch. 58f [II, 381]; italics added.

Ethik, ch. 56d [II, 33940].
Ethik, ch. 56c [II, 337].
Ethik, ch. 45c [II, 2423].
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a diferent way. Scheler laments that hatred of the

world is more prominent than love of it in Western
civilization. Christianity considers this world as the
valley of tears and life of sorrow, simply preparation
for the true life after death. Present-day modern
technical civilization intensifies the contempt for the
world by treating it as material for the satisfaction of
human needs. Bereaved of any spirit and immanent
form, the world must be transformed in terms of
practical human purposes. Opposed to this contempt,
Scheler points to two dominant forms of love of the
world:
One that flows from a divine person by way of a detour,
as it were, through the origin of the world. It fows in
and with the divine person. For the other kind of love
of world the world is an immediate object of
contemplation in frenzy, and of an ecstatic
enthusiasm to the degree that every thing, and
every form of existence, drowns, during such
ecstatic states, in the tides of being and life. In
earlier times it was Bruno and Spinoza, and recently
it was Walt Whitman and Verhaeren who formulated
and thought this second kind of love of the world.8
Scheler prefers the first form of love of the world,

especially in the way Francis of Assisi defines it: Only
when the love of the world is seen through God and His
image of the world, through Gods ideas and values, can
there be a motivation to raise and idealize the world in
the direction of divine ideas and values as this happens
in both culture and civilization proper.9
Hartmann disagrees with this view because of its
unjustifiable
theological presuppositions. Yet his
rejection does not impel him toward the other kind of
love of the world, which Scheler describes in terms of a
continuous frenzy. It is calmness and clearness of
vision, not any form of frenzy, which Hartmann
associates with the love of the world. If there are
historical predecessors for his conception, they would
be
Lao-tse
and
Chuang-tse,
but unfortunately
Hartmann does not mention them.
Hartmann is concerned that Scheler conditions our
love of the world on Gods love and the need to escape
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from the world in order to appreciate it. While

describing the process of becoming human, Scheler
writes:
At the moment when the actual spiritual being and
its ideal contents constituted themselves through the
act of saying No to the concrete reality in the
environment, when an attitude of world-openness
originated and a never-ceasing urge to penetrate
without limits into the
8
9
Scheler, PersonandSelfValue, 1889.

Scheler, PersonandSelfValue, 189.
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149
revealed sphere of the world and to stop at nothing in

the world of facts, when man, becoming himself,
broke with the methods of all preceding life to adjust
or to be adjusted to the environment and embarked
upon the opposite direction of adapting the revealed
world to himself and his own life of organic
stability, when man separated himself from nature
and transformed it into an object subject to
domination and to
the
control
of
symbolic
manipulationat this moment man was also driven
to anchor his own central being in something beyond
the world. He who had placed himself so boldly above
this world could no longer regard himself merely as a
member or part of this world.10
What makes Hartmann uncomfortable about Schelers

notion is mans fulfillment of his own personality
through his escape from the world and fight toward
God. Neither the reality of the world nor the vocation of
man is taken seriously by the escape. This misstep, of
trying to figure out our position outside of cosmos in
order to establish our position within it, is the source of
Schelers mistakes. Again he regards the person as the
subject only and thinks of God as a person. Hartmann
says, The world is not a correlate of anything, and he
may as well add: Nor is the man.11 Schelers
personalism becomes yet another ism, in a bad
sense of that word.
Hartmann is no less critical of the existentialist way
of pursuing authenticity. Our everyday life does indeed
obstruct our genuine potentials by forcing us to play
the roles that are expected of us by our surroundings.
But is it really the case that our experience of anxiety
lifts us up to the level of genuineness? Does the
meaning of the human being manifest itself in the
experience of fear and its relationship to death? In
Hartmanns opinion, fear and anxiety are the worst
possible guides toward authenticity. He who is filled
with such fear and anxiety is incapable of a realistic
view of life; he is incapable of adapting to the world as
it is.12
Instead of extremism, Hartmann recommends
modesty; instead of anxiety and fear of death, trust
and love of the world. Returning once more to
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Socrates, who serves as an exemplar of an authentic

personality
10
11
12
Scheler, MansPlaceinNature, 90.

Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 24e [I, 329]. See also ch. 85 [III, 26074, especially 263].
Hartmann, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, ch. 30d, 182. In his
review of the 1100- pages long book, Von Der Wahrheit, by Karl
Jaspers, Hartmann makes an important remark: In addition to
these [issues dealing with the nature of truth] he [Jaspers]
considers love. When the short but detailed discussion of love
here is compared with Heideggers analysis of anxiety, it is a
great relief to find that the characteristic power of man does
not rest only in unhappiness and despair, but that it acquires
its real meaning in the positive form of elevated thought and
self transcendence; German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years,
4267.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
for Hartmann, he speaks of faith and trust as requiring

moral courage and strength: Blind faith, blind trust, is
the supreme endurance-test of moral strength, the true
criterion of genuineness in all the deeper dispositional
relations of man with man. The ability to entrust ones
own interest to another person is a precious gift, and
this gift is comparable to that of love and, as a value,
can even transcend it.13
Hartmann recommends the attitudes of faith and
trust as the foundation not only of our moral life, but
also of our broader search for the meaning of life.
Faith and trust give us a feeling of a solid earth under
our feet, on which we can build a sense of solidarity
and optimism and confront the complexity of life. What
we need is a return to the world, not an escape from
reality or a despair of the finitude. Our problem is not
our finitude but our blindness for values; not the
forgetfulness of an abstract being but the forgetfulness
of the concrete, real world, of its individuality,
transiency, and imperfection.
When Hartmann speaks of personal love, he
emphasizes that it can be rightly directed at a morally
imperfect person. It can be done without ignorance of
all the factual imperfections, when our gaze is directed
at his ideal self. He refers to this as an ethical
divination, because genuine love foresees and divines
the possibility of an actualization of the ideal self in the
real world. Through this anticipation and active
encouragement, personal love helps the beloved person
grow and strive toward his ideal selfhood.
Hartmann envisages a possibility of something
analogous of our relationship to the real world. He
memorably writes,
In life there is always something to which a man
can look up. The upward gaze is not a result, but a
cause. It does not arise out of comparison, but
itself selects the points of comparison. In the ethos
of the upward gaze all reverence and awe have
their basis, as everyone who is morally unspoiled
proves by his reverence and awe for real worth and
merit, for antiquity or for persons in positions of
higher responsibility.14
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Hartmanns discussion has nothing to do with

intellectualism and moralism. And although he does
not explicitly talk about love of the world either, this
detour should enable us to capture the idea in terms of
his own philosophy. He understands love in a generic
way, in the spirit of Kants conception of good will,
which consists in an uncalculated benevolence
directed toward the well-being of others. Hartmann
applies this concept
13
14
Quoted from Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 52b [II, 293] and ch. 52a [II, 292].
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151
more consistently than Kant. He maintains the values

of intention as defining of moral values and never
switches from good will to the concept of duty (as Kant
does). It is especially easy to relate Hartmanns
conception of brotherly love and the love of the remote
with good will. Personal love and radiant virtue, which
Kant does not address in his ethics, pose a greater
challenge.
According to Dietrich von Hilderbrand, we can divide
various human motivations into intentio benevolentiae and
intentio unionis: the benevolent intentions and the
intentions striving toward unity. These intentions do
not exclude each other, but they are separable. In some
forms of love: selflove, brotherly love, love among friends, love of
strangers, and love between parent and child, the
intentio benevolentiae is centrally significant. (Such
benevolence may be directed toward the selfperfecting, or toward the service of others, but,
although moving in the opposite directions, these
two can be complementary.) For some other forms of love
personal love, love of the world and love of Godthe
intentio unionisappears to be of more direct importance.
Hartmann is not primarily interested in the intentio
unionis, just as he is not engaged with the intentio obliqua.
In his aesthetics, even more than
in his ethical writings, he emphasizes our striving
toward the highest and the greatest as the primordial
urge of human beings. This resonates closely to his
descriptions of personal love and the combination of
radiant virtue and wisdom, which I treat here as
Hartmanns version of the love of the
world. In his Aesthetics, Hartmann uses an expression that points us in a
new direction: morally sublime.15
In its original meaning, the word sublime refers to
something great or superior. When we experience
something as sublime, we feel overwhelmed by the
greatness or superiority of what we observe. The purest
forms of the sublime can be recognized not only in the
realms of religion and myth, but also in the realms of
nature and art. We do not have a specific biological
sense organ by means of which we can perceive the
sublime. We even need to establish a certain distance
from the sensually given to experience something as
sublime. Moreover, we need to create a distance from
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our ego: the less this experience is about myself, the

more easily I can experience the sublime. The sublime
is something grasped by the entire soul.
In the case of moral sublimity, we encounter
something that transcends the categories of moral
goodness and strives toward the highest and
greatest. Both personal love and love of the world
fall into these
15
See, for example, sthetik, ch. 30ab, 3638.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
categories. Personal love unites the innermost depth of

one human being with the innermost depth of another.
It is a complete giving of oneself to a relationship with
another person: one soul surrenders to another and
unites with it. Personal love is an uncalculated giving
of oneself without losing oneself in this relationship.
Love of the world means a refusal to control,
manipulate, or exploit. It is a refusal to focus only on
usefulness and the values of practical significance and
is based on wonder and trust. It means the afirmation
of all reality, a surrender that leads to a sense of unity
with the world as a whole, to peace of mind and
serenity.
We all crave the experience of personal love, of loving
and being loved in that way, but such experience is not
always possible. Its presence (or absence) does not
depend on our wishes, attitudes, or feelings alone. Love
of the world, by contrast, seems closer to something
that is in our power, to something that the personality
is capable of nourishing. Understood in this sense,
serenity within and peace with the rest of the world may
be the ultimate form of love and the final wisdom of life.
They may be the highest accomplishments that human
beings are capable of, the most profound fulfillment of
the value of personality.
Hartmann writes, The whole art of loving consists
in retaining this high point of vision as a perspective
and remaining under its spell. A life of love is a life
spent in the knowledge of what is best worth knowing, a
life of participation in the highest that is in man.16
Now we understand how our lives, and real being in
general, can be coordinated in the light of the ideal.
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16
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Conclusion: Hartmanns
New Ways of
Philosophy
One clear evening, when Hartmann was a boy, his father
took him outside. They must have stayed outdoors for a
quite a while, looking at the starry sky. His father
wanted to show the boy how, when observed in contrast
to the local church tower, the position of the stars in the
sky would change with the passing of time.1 This may
well have been Hartmanns introduction into philosophy,
and he never forgot the lesson. Whether he was later
thinking about the starry heavens of values, or the
oceanic depths of being, Hartmann never failed to relate
it to something right here and right now, tangible and
measurable by the standards of our ordinary life. He did
not allow himself to be carried away on the wings of
speculations; he never overlooked what is right in front of
him. Both the far away and the nearest must always be
kept in sight, and the resistance of what is given and near
must be taken as the ultimate check on our thoughts
and theories. If something (like our ideas of the divine
being, or of what happens after we die) could not be
brought up in an interactive connection with the aspects
of the phenomenally given world, Hartmann bracketed
it out of his philosophical analysis. Philosophy for him
was not primarily a method of thinking but a way of
relating to the world.
Hartmanns most visible philosophical strength is his
sharp eye for details. These details, however, are
hardly ever the ultimate points that cannot be further
resolved. Nor are they isolated from the network of
related elements, within which they are structured.
Whatever event or problem Hartmann happened to be
exploring, he would carry out his exploration in
connection with other related phenomena. There is no
atomism of any kind in his philosophy, nor is there any
form of reductivism that would be philosophically
acceptable for him.
This way of philosophical analysis difers significantly
from how analysis is usually understood in Western
philosophy. The appeal of the analytical method has
9781623567903_Con_Fpp_txt_prf.indd 153
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always been the presumption that it will lead us to the

ultimate elements, to some Archimedean point that will
articulate for
1
This story is told by Frida Hartmann in her account of Hartmanns

youth. See Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel, ed.
Frida Hartmann and Renate Heimsoeth (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag
Herbert Grundmann, 1978), 31721. Hartmann was eight years
old when his father died.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
us an overall view of the world. Whether this point is

sought in the world, or outside of it, whether it is
expected to be found in simple truths, or clear and
distinct ideas, or the ultimate constituents of reality, or
the
eschatological
completion
of
the
worlds
development, our quest for certainty has relied on
analysis to take us to the ultimate and the
unconditioned.
To better understand why Hartmann rejected such
philosophical analysis, let us remind ourselves of the
fundamental presuppositions of Western philosophy
and sum up where he stood in regard to them. These
four pillars are:
1. Theprincipleoforder, which asserts that everything

that exists is ordered and structured.
2. Theprincipleofknowability, which maintains that

everything that has structure and order is knowable.
3. Theprincipleofselfmastery, which claims that ethical

4.
development and virtuous behavior require selfrestraint and self-control.

Theprincipleofreciprocitybetween virtuous behavior
and happiness, which reassures us that those who
master their own passions and behave virtuously
will be rewarded, while those who do not will be
punished.
Hartmann unquestionably embraces a version of

the first principle: all being must be structured and
ordered. A major part of Hartmanns philosophical
endeavor is to uncover the basic ontological laws of
that structure and order. Where he difers from most
philosophers is in refusing to think about the worlds
structure in terms of eitheror, regardless of whether
the relevant categories are determinacy or
indeterminacy, matter or form, Daseinor Sosein,
finitude or infinity, or conflict and harmony. Our
understanding of the structure of being requires
systematic ontological thinking that must reconstruct
the layers of the real world and explain their mutual
relations. Hartmann attempts this in, perhaps, the
most detailed categorial analysis ever undertaken in
the history of philosophy.
Hartmanns project has not been completed; it
nevertheless provides an important foundation for our
other philosophical endeavors. Ontology may not be the
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most exciting philosophical discipline, but, in Hartmanns

view, it is the most indispensible. In constructing a
house for ourselves, we become preoccupied with the
arrangement of the living space and not the foundation,
which is underground and mostly invisible from above;
ontology is likewise far from our daily concerns and
immediate interest. And just as in our excitement to
arrange the living space as quickly
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HartmannsNewWaysofPhilosophy
155
as possible our house may be built without a proper

foundation, so in philosophy we can develop theories
without concern for what kind of base, with all of its
possibilities and restrains, the real world provides. A
house with an inadequate foundation will sooner or later
collapse, as will similarly constructed philosophical
theories.
Without
proper
ontology
and
proper
philosophical grounding, we enter the world easily
swayed by delusion. We see the relevance of a sound
ontological foundation in the second pillar, which is
perhaps the most unsustainable of the four. Hartmann
rejects the epistemological optimism on which this pillar
is based. Like a child who does not recognize its
limitations or the complexities of the surrounding
environment, epistemological optimism is driven by
our quest to know the world by capturing it into a net
of static, rationally arranged concepts. Yet the view of
the overlap between the ideal, the rational, and the real,
on which much of the epistemological optimism is
grounded, is untenable. The categories of logic, which
belong to ideal being, are not the categories of our
actual thinking, much less are they the categories of real
being. Just because our logical principles deny the
validity of contradictory assertions about the states of
afairs, these principles cannot make the knots of the
world either disappear in thought, or dissolve in reality.
There is also no total overlap between the real and the
rational, for there are aspects of real being that are not
and cannot be known. There are even some aspects of
ideal being that are not rationally known or rationally
unknowable. What is more, there are nonrational ways
of knowing. Just as the ontological framework must
include the ideal in addition to the real, so must the
epistemological framework incorporate not only the
rational but also the irrational. Among the irrational
functions of the soul, we must account for the intuitive,
perceptual, and emotional. Our encounters of the world
begin with perception and intuition, and their base is
emotional, not rational.
Conflict as a way of being is a fundamental
ontological insight
relevant
not
only
for
the
metaphysics
of
nature
but
also
for
the
metaphysics of morals. Hartmann must accept a
version of the third pillar; after all, we cannot live
without some form of discipline or self- mastery.
The purpose of self-mastery in the case of every
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individual is a transformative development through

time. Our natural impulses and dispositions are not
something to be blocked or tamed. The point is to
ennoble them, to allow them to enrich themselves
through a continuous interaction with our higher
functions and gifts. This must be done in the light of
both general human ideals and the ideals unique for
every
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TheAnalysisofWonder
individual. For Hartmann, the low is always strong, and

its blocking or removal undermines the whole
structure of reality. The high provides guidance but it
is also weak and in need of a supporting foundation.
Without grounding in something low and strong, the
high is hollow and unstable, nothing but a game of
words or a flight of imagination.
Hartmann has serious reservations about the forth
pillar, which to him is as questionable as the second
one. We simply cannot declare that virtue will lead to
happiness; in too many known cases it does not. Nor
can we properly salvage this principle by postulating
that virtue makes us worthy of happiness, as Kant does,
or by appealing to the system of rewards (and
punishments) in another life. Life does not present us
with such neatly finished formulas. What we witness
time and again is struggle and conflict, a journey rather
than a destination. Struggle and conflict keeps us
moving; they are behind our decisions, intentions, and
actions. They keep our feeling of value alive and
sharpen our discernment of them. Struggle and conflict
open new vistas for us. Personality is a life-long series of
attempts to come up with constructive solutions to
these struggles and conflicts. It is a life lived at the
crossroads of real and ideal being. To be a free and
dignified human being is to be a journeyman.
Instead of the fourth pillar, Hartmann proposes the
following approach. If there is any reward for struggles
and striving toward self-mastery and virtue, it is the
enjoyment of the journey, together with the discovery of
the riches and wonders of life along the way. Happiness
is not the highest value, nor is it something that can be
pursued directly. It should not be our central concern; it
should be the spiritual values that philosophy
investigates and leads us to pursue. The ability to give
and receive love (in all of its forms), to be truthful and
trusting, to appreciate beauty and sublimity in nature
and art, to pursue the richness of experience, these are
the values that bestow meaning on our lives. In modern
times, we have become unduly preoccupied with the
values of the useful and the pleasant, just as we are
bending over to prove that every one of our endeavors
will lead to some practical results. Although such values
are necessary for the sustenance of our existence,
they leave us spiritually empty. They leave us without a
sense of wonder for its many riches that have no
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utilitarian value or practical application. They leave us

without the sense of belonging to the world.
Our obsession with practicality and efficiency narrows
our value registers and makes us blind to a variety of
spiritual values. If there is one question that bothers
Hartmann most, one motive that drives his entire
philosophical opus, it is the blindness of modern man.
What Hartmann wants to understand is not only what
leads to this blindness but, also, what cure to ofer for
it. The one central thought that guides him in all his
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157
philosophical projects is the conviction that we need to

rediscover the real world and relearn how to perceive,
appreciate, and love it in its complexity. This is why
Hartmann thinks of philosophy as an appreciative and
reflective attitude toward the worlds wonders, without
the expectation of a definitive truth or a promised land
of happiness for all. Philosophy cannot accomplish such
miracles. Philosophy is just the analysis of wonder, come
what may.
*
Jaspers divides philosophical thinkers into four groups.

First, there are seminal thinkers (such as Plato,
Augustine, and Kant) whose ideas are continuously
fruitful. Second, there are the intellectual visionaries,
who were either the original metaphysicians (such as
Parmenides, Heraclitus, Spinoza), those fired with the
religion of the cosmos (e.g, Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
and Bruno), the gnostic dreamers (such as Origen,
Bhme, and Schelling), or the constructors (such as
Hobbes, Leibniz, and Fichte). Third, they can be great
disturbers, among which Jaspers distinguishes the
probing negators (including Abelard, Descartes, and
Hume) from the radical awakeners (including Pascal,
Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche). Finally, there are great
systematizers and creative orderers, whose systems are
the culmination of long developments (the greatest of
which are Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel).
Where does Hartmann belong?
From one end of the spectrum, it would be
presumptuous to put Hartmann in the same category
with Plato, Augustine and Kant. Despite his flashes of
brilliance, despite the range of insights in several
philosophical disciplines that are unquestionably novel
and penetrating, we should be hesitant to include
Hartmann among the greatest. If nothing else, his
philosophy is for the most part forgotten and whether it
may continue to bear fruits in the future, remains to be
seen.
On the other end, there is plainly something of a
great systematizer in Hartmann. Both his ontology and
his
axiology
belong
among
the
greatest
systematizations in Western philosophy. But do they
carry the ultimate significance of his work? Hartmann
himself emphasizes that the time of great systems is
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over, indicating that he did not see his own project in

the light of a system-builder.2 Hartmanns approach to
philosophy is systematic, without the desire to build a
complete system.
2
See Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, Introduction, sec. 18, 2831.
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TheAnalysisofWonder
Looking at Jasperss second and third groups of

philosophers, Hartmann appears as both an intellectual
visionary and a disturber. He ofers an original
metaphysical vision and attempts to act as an awakener.
He warns us of the blindness of our age and tries to
restore our sense of reality. His ontological pluralism
and his axiology, which attempt to reawaken us for the
richness and wonders of reality, convey a message as
deep as it is urgent.
Despite its depth and urgency, Hartmann does not
issue any apocalyptic warning. Nor is his philosophy
based on any revolutionary novelty. With
his
characteristic modesty, he admits that the viewpoints he
advocates have already been defended by other
philosophers. In this sense, his philosophy is not new.
And yet, as he himself remarks in a dialectical manner,
there is something new in the old whose being has not
been exhausted by the fact that it was and is.
Something can be missing although we have it. Man
must learn to see it in a new way, so he can recognize it
in the old.3
Jasperss classification of philosophers is an example of
the eitheror reasoning: Hartmann must belong either
to this category of philosophers, or to another one. As
we have seen, however, it is impossible to squarely
locate Hartmann into any of the provided boxes. His
thinking is an illustration of his both . . . and. . .
approach. Hartmann balances the appreciation for the
concrete with the pursuit of the abstract; he succeeds
in maintaining both wonder and analysis. Regardless
of how we may want to classify Hartmanns
philosophy, this is an achievement that can be ascribed
to very few thinkers.
*
In our impatience to reach the true picture and reject

all others as false, in our vehement quest for certainty
based on one single principle, we have made two costly
mistakes. One of them is to detach the human being
from the world. The other is to internally divide the
human being and open a chasm between his rational
and irrational functions.
On manytoo manyof our philosophy textbooks,
there is an image of Auguste Rodins Thinker. This is an
image of the man cramped in a thinking posture,
oblivious to the rest of the world. Hartmann pities the
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philosophy represented by this statue. To him, it

symbolizes everything that went wrong with philosophy.
An alternative image that represents Hartmanns
vision of philosophy is the Renaissance popularization
of the Vitruvius man. This is not the image of a man
lost in thought and lost for the world. Rather, this is
the
3
Hartmann, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Preface for

the first edition, iii.
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159
image of a man standing with arms and legs

outstretched, proportionately embedded in the world
and reaching toward the entire universe. This man is
eager to participate in the surrounding world and
explore every one of its corners, every one of its
wonders.
Does the Vitruvius man enjoy every aspect of his
journey? Certainly not. Reality is not all good or all
bad. Reality is not all love, nor all sufering, all
knowledge, or all ignorance. Let us review two examples
from Hartmanns life to illustrate just that. In the years
preceding World War II, the madness of National
Socialism was pulling many leading German intellectuals
into its ranks. Even those who declined to join the
Party, like Hartmann, were expected to begin their
university classes with the then mandatory Hail Hitler!
Hartmanns refusal made him one of the rare professors
who dared to do it at Humboldt University in Berlin, and,
indeed, in the whole of Germany. Despite enormous
pressure, Hartmann stood his ground defending the
ideals of human dignity and individual freedom.4
Another example worth mentioning occurred a few
years later. In February 1945, the university building in
which Hartmann used to lecture was destroyed in an
aerial bombing and all his classes were suspended. He
was then living in Berlin, which had been transformed
into a real-life inferno. Without teaching obligations,
Hartmann decided to write his
aesthetics book,
completing the first draft in the period from March to
September 1945.5 Perhaps the most fascinating book of his
entire opus, there is no despair in it over war and
violence, maimed bodies, and destroyed buildings. As a
boy he learned to measure the movement of the stars
against the objects on earth, and now he measured the
events of the day against the eternal beauty of Bachs
music, the portraits of Rembrandt, the dramas of
Shakespeare, and the novels of Dostoevsky. He delivers
a remarkable message: wherever we are and whatever
events pull us into their currents, we should not lose
sight and cease to strive toward the highest and the most
sublime.
In Hartmanns attempt to coordinate the real in the
light of the ideal there is no appeal to a transcendent
God. Nor is a utopia needed to turn the world upside
down. We would search in vain through his books for any
trace of the existential despair, or for a flight from reality
9/26/2013 4:08:27 PM
into a seemingly value-neutral analysis of words and

concepts. What we find instead is the abundance of
love and reverence for life, in its various forms and
4
This story was reported to me by my teacher, Lewis White Beck,

who in 19378 took a year-long seminar with Hartmann on Kants
CritiqueofPureReason.
As testified by Frida Hartmann; see Hartmann, sthetik, 477 (Afterword).
9/26/2013 4:08:27 PM
160
TheAnalysisofWonder
manifestations. In Hartmanns writings there is that

feeling of closeness to life and the participation in it,
together with the observation of the tragic and the
sublime wonders of the world, furthered by philosophical
thoughts trying to penetrate as deeply as possible into
the secrets of those wonders. Those thoughts, as
systematic and as rigorous as they can be, do not lead
to definitive findings, but to the discovery of everdeeper antinomies and wonders of the world. And this,
in turn, leads us to appreciate the world even more,
and try to reflect on it more thoroughly than before. The
wheel with the Vitruvius man turns on, without ever
coming to a stop.
*
The working title of Arendts The Human Condition was Amor

Mundi, for the love of the world. She wanted to oppose
the contemptus mundi, contempt for the world and our
alienation from it, so prevalent in the modern period of
humanity. Arendt
also
intended
to
redirect
the
wondering impulse that the ancients knew as the origin
of philosophical thinking. This impulse would be aimed
directly at the realm of human afairs and the vitaactiva,
rather than the ancient vita contemplativa. Thus, her focus
was on action, rather than on labor (as in ancient
Greek and Roman civilization), or on work and
fabrication (as in modern European and
American
civilization).
It is possible that in the process of writing this book
Arendt herself changed even more than its title. She
considered the 1957 launching of Sputnik, an epochmaking event, second in importance to no other, not even
to the splitting of the atom. Arendt not without irony saw
this as the first step toward an escape from mans
imprisonment to the earth.6
Hartmann, who died seven years before the launch of
Sputnik, would be quite unequivocal on this issue. Far
from being imprisoned by the earth, we are primarily
prisoners of our blindness and delusions, of an
insensitivity and inability to perceive and embrace what
is before and within us. We have made ourselves
strangers in this world by promulgating the myth, not only
of the Tree of Knowledge (the second pillar), but also of
the Promised Land (the fourth pillar). If this land exists,
it is not in another life or in another
galaxy.
For
Hartmann, the Promised Land is right here and now, it
9/26/2013 4:08:27 PM
is in our world.
Hartmanns entire philosophy is an attempt to
rediscover the real and develop an appreciation for it.
The real has to be rediscovered and rescued from
political and economic schemes of practical men that
6
Arendt, TheHumanCondition, 1.
9/26/2013 4:08:27 PM
161
have crippled humanity. In times of crisis, when our

world seems to be falling apart, we need philosophy
not less but more. We need it as much as we need
personal security, shelter above our heads, and food
on our table. Perhaps, in these times, we need
philosophy the most: What is the worth of mere
existence, without trust and love, without the pursuit of
the highest and the best?
Hartmanns philosophy matters because it teaches us
to approach our imperfect world with perceptiveness,
appreciation, and love. To do that, we do not need
sophisticated intellectualistic and moralistic schemes. We
should not attempt to escape from this world. Hartmanns
philosophy teaches us that this world is the base on
which we build our lives. We must always return to this
world, to rediscover it anew, to wonder at it and reflect on
it. The central idea of Hartmanns entire philosophical opus
is the rediscovery of reality, with all of its conflicts, in all
of its imperfect glory. This task is not accomplished by
means of rationality and morality alone, but primarily by
a loving attitude. Perhaps the most memorable sentence
of Hartmanns entire opus is: he who loves is the only one
who sees; while he who is without love is blind.7
As a young man, with World War I ending and an
uncertain career ahead, Hartmann confessed to his
dearest friend that he was always in love and
perpetually perplexed.8 This uncertainty extended to
his entire fate. Looking back at his overall life and work
we are grateful that he stayed the course. Seen in the
light of his philosophy, it would be much better if many
more of us could find ourselves always in love and
perpetually perplexed.
7
8

See Hartmanns letter to Heinz Heimsoeth, of October 21, 1918;
Nicolai Hartmann undHeinzHeimsoethimBriefwechsel, 315.
9/26/2013 4:08:28 PM
9781623567903_Con_Fpp_ txt_prfindd
162
9/26/2013 4:08 28 PM
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de Gruyter, 1950.
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DiephilosophischenGrundfragenderBiologie. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
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PM

The Analysis of Wonder - Predrag Cicovacki

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